Ten Facebook Pages You Need to Stop Sharing From

A friend of mine shared an eyebrow-raising article on Facebook. The linked story was along the lines of “private planes stolen by terrorists in the Middle East, and an attack is imminent”. The sensible people among his friends good-naturedly mocked him. They ribbed him about how ridiculous the prediction was. And all you had to do was consider the source.

My friend had shared the story from a notoriously crackpot Facebook page. The post lacked any merit, save a few tenuous and unrelated pieces of actual news. This behavior was typical of this particular page. Often, these types of pages hook you with a kernel of truth, and then wrap it in layers of idiocy.

When confronted, this friend said, “well, we’ll see who’s right in time.” The prediction by Natural News has failed to become reality almost a year later.

The Facebook fan pages below have a habit of spitting scientific inquiry and reason in the eye. They also have an unreasonably high number of fans who share their inanity. Shares from the following pages deserve a serious eye roll and shaking of one’s head.

#10 Alex Jones

What He Says About Himself

What He Really Does

Mr. Jones uses a ton of hyperbole, conspiracy theories, and a loose connection to reality, to whip up fear and loathing in his audience.

Recent Ridiculousness

Whatever your feelings are on using legislation to increase vaccination rates, you won’t find any legitimate support for implications that vaccines contain toxic doses of chemical. Nor that there are aborted fetal cells in any of the shots we get.

Sample Fan Comment

World government, population control, fluoride hysteria, GMOs, illegal cancer cures, and chemtrails. This comment has it all.

#9 Food Babe

Facebook fans: 938K

What She Says About Herself

“Vani Hari started FoodBabe.com in April 2011 to spread information about what is really in the American food supply. She teaches people how to make the right purchasing decisions at the grocery store, how to live an organic lifestyle, and how to travel healthfully around the world. The success in her writing and investigative work can be seen in the way food companies react to her uncanny ability to find and expose the truth.”

What She Really Does

Ms. Hari, the “Food Babe”, parrots Dr. Mercola and cobbles together cherry-picked blurbs from questionable studies and Wikipedia. She uses the term “investigation” to excuse the fact that she often gives medical advice without having any education in the life sciences. She picks the weirdest ingredients to go after.

Recent Ridiculousness

This from the woman who claimed to have cured all her allergies with acupuncture and “clean eating”.

Sample Fan Comment

On Facebook, it’s only a matter of time before someone pulls out the EO sales kit.

Recent Ridiculousness

Sample Fan Comment

Wait. What, exactly, are you threatening to do?

#7 Dr. Joseph Mercola

Facebook fans: 1M

What He Says About Himself

“I am an osteopathic physician who believes that proper nutrition, not medicine, is the key to good health. I seek to treat the whole person, not just the symptoms. I offer you practical health solutions without the hype.”

What He Really Does

Dr. Mercola, by virtue of his credentials and large fanbase, is possibly one of the most dangerous people on Facebook. Because he generates fear around science-based medicine, he discourages people from seeking real help for illness. He also scares people away from vaccinations, fluoride, GMO food, pasteurized dairy, and dental fillings. But you know, buy his line of supplements and all will be well.

Recent Ridiculousness

I like walking barefoot. I grew up in California, where it’s pretty common. But the idea that it’s necessary for optimal health is pretty silly. And in some environments, it’s a good way to pick up a soil-borne parasite.

Sample Fan Comment

Mix in a dash of Round Up fearmongering, and you’ve got an audience that can’t make a move without cross-referencing all the boogeymen—and seeking help from the guru.

What They Say About Themselves

What They Really Do

Recent Ridiculousness

Everyone that promotes “natural cures” above all else seems to jump from one cure-all to another. WebMD specifically states that there is insufficient evidence for at least three items on their list.

Sample Fan Comment

In this case, a commenter calls them on their bullshit and offers a warning.

#5 NaturalNews.com

Facebook fans: 1.4M

What They Say About Themselves

“NaturalNews.com is an independent news resource that covers the natural health and wellness topics that empower individuals to make positive changes in their personal health. NaturalNews offers uncensored news that allows for healthier choice.”

What They Really Do

NaturalNews.com is arguably the most balls-to-the-wall looniest page on Facebook. They have never met a conspiracy theory they don’t love.

Recent Ridiculousness

Basically, if you are a well-known scientist, you are a shill.

Sample Fan Comment

Yup.

Bonus Post

#4 Collective Evolution

Facebook fans: 1.7M

What They Say About Themselves

“CE is an organization that inspires change. Action is everything, both inside each of us and in our communities.”

What They Really Do

All the misinformation, all the time.

Recent Ridiculousness

No. Coke is not like a poison.

Sample Fan Comment

Really? Citation needed.

#3 MindBodyGreen

Facebook fans: 2M

What They Say About Themselves

“We are a conversation about health. Opinions expressed are those of the author, who is a real person. Please keep that in mind when you comment!”

What They Really Do

The “conversations about health” are decidedly in favor of “natural remedies” that are not supported by scientific research. People who waste their time mucking about with ineffective alternative treatments often die much sooner.

Sample Fan Comment

#2 Spirit Science

What They Say About Themselves

“The Science of Spirit, in the Spirit of Science, coming together to create something new.

“This is our world to create, so lets get started!”

What They Really Are

Most of their posts are harmless new-agey spiritual stuff and kookiness. But sometimes they veer into unsupportable natural remedies and outright pseudoscience.

Recent Ridiculousness

Sample Fan Comment

It’s not every day that someone recommends that you stare at the sun.

#1 The Mind Unleashed

Facebook fans: 6.6M

What They Say About Themselves

“We seek to break the chains of conventional thinking and inspire others to get involved and help create big change on the planet. We believe that we are in the midst of a massive paradigm shift, and many are starting to realize that business as usual means that we will travel down a path of half-conscious self destruction. Here you will find a healthy mixture of information related to activism, awareness, and personal growth.”

What They Really Do

They’re a good example of slipping in a bit of bullshit here and there amongst the standard viral Facebook stuff. There’s a theme of immature hippy-style mistrust of any and every authority. What are you rebelling against? What have you got?

Recent Ridiculousness

So cultures are bad.

Sample Fan Comment

Word salad, with a touch of Armageddon thrown in.

Bonus Post

Ernest Hemingway coined the term Crap Detector to refer to the little mechanism that ought to be working inside each person’s brain.

The most certain way to develop this ability to discern truth from baloney is education. In particular, an education in science will help protect you from the charlatans and cranks of the world.

Comments

Dear Dawn, this is a very very poorly written article. While I appreciate the message you’re trying to put out there, there is a lot of misinformation on your critique of these pages too. For starters, how about when you’re trying to bust a natural myth, you reference actual peer reviewed journal articles instead of abc news and random pages of the internet that were written on a whim and have no scientific backing.

Example 2: You claim that honey has no medicinal properties and yet, there are several peer reviewed, published journal articles evaluating and confirming the medicinal properties of honey. Here is an example – http://link.springer.com/art…/10.1007/s12349-009-0051-6…

We need skepticism in this world – Healthy Skepticism. Definitely not the kind you seem to be demonstrating.

Bad example. Ever since sailing ships could be seen disappearing over the horizon, it’s been pretty widely understood that the Earth is not flat.

However, there are other examples which prove the point that consensus is sometimes wrong.

The semi-empirical Ptolemaic geocentric model of the structure of the cosmos was scientific consensus for fifteen (15) centuries! It was a true consensus. No scientist of consequence questioned it until the early 1500s, and it remained dominant into the 1600s. But it was completely wrong.

A 20th century example is Piltdown Man. For more than 40 years it was broadly accepted in the scientific community as “the missing link” in human evolution, proving that humans had evolved from ape-like ancestors. But it was eventually proven to be a fraud.

Yes! Just because there is a “scientific” article saying one thing doesn’t mean it’s the “truth”. You also need to read the scientific article and see if their methods are good and see if the paper where it’s been published has a good review process…

Wow. Just what the world needs, another person believing in the b.s. Lies of American propaganda. Dawn, it seems as though you seriously have no idea what you are talking about. Most of what these pages are saying have scientific evidence and are pushing people to do the right thing. Eat health, be well, exercise, use natural cures instead of cramp chemicals. Have you ever lived over seas where they actually care about how people live and eat? More the half of the “safe” chemicals you are trying or convince people are ok are actually banned in other countries, like Japan. Centurions come from Japan and they live their lives much like what you are arguing against. You claim these pages are using hyperboles and feeding into some type of hysteria when in fact YOU seem to be believing the crappy American way of life. Is some of it a little over-exaggerated, sure. Does some of it seem outlandish to someone who thinks they should use medicine to cure their problems instead of JUST eating right, exercising, and living as stree-fee as possible, sure. So, Do your research instead of discussing and posting a blog like this which can have very negative consequences, leading people to continue to believe that the way we live in America is ok, because it is not.

The other question we may want to ask is about the quantity of it to be effective. So many other things are healing almost everything but we never you the quantity we need to eat drink. ùSuper food yes until we know how much we can see if it is even possible

What you fail to realize is that all of these things i.e Turmeric, honey, coconut oil, oregano oil, etc were original medicines, western medicine is alternative medicine. Many countries have banned GMO’s.

I’m with you!!, thank you so much for your reply as I see this article Dawn (whoever the fuck you are) as thee complete BULLSHiT you are speaking of!! Your comments convey your complete ignorance of the world today including health and science!! You sight zero sources and know nothing about what you speak of!!! People like you are why the world is blind! Half these pages you mention are awesome!! And I’m a very educated and aware human!! Fluoride isn’t bad. For you?.?,!, coke isn’t posion??. Are u kidding me??? Your a joke! Get off the Internet please

Nothing more condescending and pathetic as someone who uses an attack on either grammar or spelling to ridicule someone.
Congratulations. You must be SO proud of yourself.
Everyone hates people like you.
Wanker.

No doubt. The mis-spelling of simple 7th grade level words is a pretty good sign of a lack of education. The problem with defending these sites (not sights or cites) against greedy corporations is that the sites are just as money hungry as the corporations they fight. They need to whip up fear and then claim the ability to ease that fear to stay in business. This is not altruism here. It’s careerism. And let’s face it, the search for absolute safety and security is a farce. There are no panaceas. There is no escape from the messiness of the world. There is, however, a lot of money to be made telling people they are smarter than everyone else. There’s no difference between these sites and Bernie Madoff.

Spelling and grammar are indications of a couple important things:
1. The education one is purporting to have.
2. The attention to detail one needs to show they put some care and thought into their complex arguments, rather than being driven by passion.

I’m with the others. Being able to spell, punctuate, and write a complete sentence is an indication of a certain level of intelligence. You can’t claim to be well-educated and not be able to do those things.

Or the individual has a learning disability that affects their ability to write properly. Their ideas might be sound, but they won’t be communicated cleanly.

I know a guy who’s like that. Dyslexia, but he’s pretty damn smart. If you went off his spelling, you might think he’s undereducated. He just has a challenge the rest of us don’t have to put up with.

Heck, he’s got a damn fine grasp of English and it isn’t even his first language! He can wow you verbally, but his spelling is damn messy.

Hell, I’ll grammar nut with the best of them, but picking on this individual’s grammar as a reason to disregard them is just ridiculous. In my opinion, it’s just another form of the Ad Hominem fallacy.

This is a great article. I can think of a few other fear mongering and/or money making pages like Russ Tanner’s Global Skywatch, Dane Wigington, Dutchsince; and the new crop of slactivists like Patrick Roddie, Max Bliss, Jim Lee, Alexandra something or other,….. just hang around the “chemtrail” pages a while and you’ll see who the cast of characters are.

let me tell you all some simple facts ……. as a educated woman i was in medical for years sadly some immune diseases cause ppls minds to not function correctly . spelling and grammar the ability to write a proper sentence is now lost to many adults . so you all need to STOP judging people , i am proof of this occurrence so stop judging me and many many others\

Dawn wrote an opinion piece, not a debunking argument. A little bit of independent follow-up by the reader verifies much of what she said.
Most of these “awesome” pages (examples of the pages you find so wonderful would be helpful) do exactly what she says: throw out just enough non-b.s. to sound credible, then fill the gaps with their unsubstantiated woo and pseudoscience to be dangerous.
Skeptics aren’t deniers. Skeptics question ALL stances–including the ones they want to be true–and trust the one with the best, most reliable evidence.
“Because Dr. Mercola, Alex Jones and Vani Hari say so,” is not evidence.

I won’t argue as to the quality of this article. but the sites mentioned are extremely harmful to the public. and the “those people” comment was in reference to individuals who share rubbish like that. Sorry for not being more clear originally 🙂

Katya, don’t listen to haters, who grasp at straws, nitpicking at grammar.
I’m still trying to figure out if this “article” ehem, is a joke…I wonder how much this person got paid to spread this campaign for ignorance. But hey, maybe they think any publicity is good publicity…

No on is nitpicking Katya’s grammar. They’re nitpicking her use of lexis. Grammar and Lexis are two separate branches of linguistics, the prior encompassing sentence structure, the former encompassing words, their meanings and spellings.

Thank you !! This article is Exactly what YOU HAVE DONE !! How dare You State how everyone takes bits and pieces of others without formal knowledge or cridentials !! I don’t know what yours truly are but You must have been paid to put down these sites YOU FEEL are unprofessional or unworthy….what does this make you look like ? Someone who got paid to trash the sites……you may have a few slander issues to contend with….c ant believe you wrote this article….you evidently DON’T KNOW WHAT YOUR WRITING ABOUT…….

I agree that this is poorly written and has a lot of misinformation itself. While there is lot of ridiculousness in information about natural cures, there is also a lot of actual science on some natural remedies. In fact, MANY pharmaceuticals are synthetic versions of natural/herbal remedies. I agree that a lot of “alternative medicine” and much of the info posted on the pages listed is garbage and essential oils are NOT a miracle cure for everything(and can actual be quite harmful sometimes). But not all of it should be dismissed. I use rx meds and things like tylenol and benedryl on a regular basis. And myself and my children are vaccinated. But there are also a lot of natural remedies that really do work and science has backed it up. To automatically dismiss something because it wasn’t created in a lab is just ignorant

The problem with “natural remedies” is that in herbal supplements and the like the dosage of any drug in there that is beneficial would be wildly unpredictable. When we refine asprin from willow bark, we are isolating the specific chemical and measuring it in order to get the proper dose. When we are talking about remedies for cancer and Alzheimer’s, we should be sure about what chemical is doing what and in what dose so that we can measure its side effects and drug interactions to make sure it’s not doing more harm to us, should we not? Otherwise, we will be consuming an unknown quantity of that chemical which may be too low to be beneficial or so high it causes bad side effects or becomes something like an MAOI which interacts very dangerously with other drugs. We’d also be consuming a bunch of impurities from the plant, in unknown quantities, that have unknown effects. Why would we want to do that? Isn’t that exactly what naturopaths complain the most about with conventional medicine?

TL;DR: Natural remedies do exist, but we should study them first and refine them into a drug before using them as any sort of treatment in order to ensure their safety and efficacy.

What she said! This nonsense is nothing but one person’s half-baked opinions. I agree that Alex Jones is a fraud but that’s pretty obvious…in any case, Dawnsbrain is a source I would never share on Facebook.

For an article that pretends to be about science and against fear mongering, all it does is promote fear with as bad as research and generalizations as it claims to be against. there is real science behind turmeric shown in many studies published in peer reviewed medical journals that show turmeric, particularly cummin, has a bunch of amazing effects on the body. Not least of which include true anti-inflamitory properties, and my favorite it promotes the growth of new brain stem cells. One of the only things known to do that. Which is used for restorative processes in the brain, for new learning, and neuron stem cells are also needed for your sense of smell, if you understand how your sense of smell works, you will understand how losing your sense of smell is one of the strongest associations with mortality of any known factor currently. Basically if you start to lose your sense of smell, then there is a good chance you will die within the next five years. So cummin is obviously doing something that may help with many brain diseases.

Also honey has many medicinal functions, also published in medical journals, not hard to look up at all.

Generalizing a site as bad because you happen to prejudge everything that does not come out of main steam media sources is, in my opinion, equally as bad as people who promote generic conspiracy theories, like all vaccines or GMO’s are bad. There are concerns for either of those, and people who say the jury is out on those topics as well have no idea about real science. How about we let real research decide those things. This would include false generalization based on one or two industry funded studies., or generalized studies that perfectly hide correlations. Especially when we are messing with ecosystems that took 4 billion years to balance out. Pretending that introducing cross species genes into crops and then doing a few studies for less then 30 years as proof they are completely harmless is just not real science. There is a lot more research needed before we forcefully declare all research must stop, and that people should not be able to decide what they eat. How long did it take us to find out the link between cancer and cigarettes and many people said the jury was out on that as well, only to be proven incorrect.

Let’s have intellectual discussions backed by real science and not have any banning of sites because you happen to have an ego large enough to believe you have it all figured out. Especially when it is obvious you have not the background to be making such claims. vaccines are a must, but there is no harm is as many studies as are needed to confirm that all the mother who saw a change in their kids, that indeed it is just all bad timing. Let’s give those mothers a little more respect while at the same time acknowledging we must vaccinate, and we must get everyone to join in, but we also keep the studies going. And figure out what environmental factors do play a role in autism, which must be happening, if your read the science, that has been proven, if not in a direct way, then in an epigenetics pathway. Again let’s let science figure it out, and let people have a voice to put forward ideas until we find the answers.

Agreed. There is no final research on GMO’s, we are the Guinea pigs! The amount of toxins and chemicals that we douse our land with for those GMO’s is astounding; check out the documentary “How to save the world”. It shows the aftermath of years of GMO’s in India. It’s not pretty. However, we can help renew the planet. Going back to natural remedies, biodynamic gardening, and community building. The path of deception and divisiveness, will only continue to destroy this beautiful planet.
Whoever paid you off Dawn, knows this. Although alex Jones is a nut, and I would never post a natural news article (even if I was paid), I do not condone this over generalization of conspiracy sites being wrong. Seriously, do more research before you put your name on such a misguiding article.

I was kind of following until that part too and then jumped immediately to the comments because that’s just ridiculous. Dawn’s pathetically simple reasoning on how they go through “extensive testing before they end up on out plate” which “proves they’re safe” is laughable. Please Dawn do some research.

And, uh…there is currently a class action lawsuit against Monsanto because Round up has in fact been proven to cause non-hodgkins lymphoma and other cancers. Looks like you did zero homework before writing this article.

Where’s yours, hon?
I will not attack you because of your opinions, but you’ve clearly not done your research. There are a few pages there that are a bit hinky, but you really have no idea about turmeric and honey being medicinal? You think GMO’s are safe? Hmm…there is much to question in your post.

Dawn or who ever you are. Why should anyone trust you over any of the pages you falsely judged? Studying medicine should actually show you that the pharmaceutical industry are money makers with no concern for human health. Besides making it worse. Yes there is an agenda with flouride, GMOS and so forth. You have been judgemental with no back up except for some snarky comments. You’re probably being paid right now to do this. Get off facebook you LIAR.

Thanks for saying this. Unsupported opinions are no better than pseudoscience, and some of the statements in this article, as you pointed out, are simply wrong.. .
As a side note, while I agree that Alex Jones is a nutjob, the irony of saying that he uses “a ton” of hyperbole was entertaining. ?

I would have ranked them in a very different order, and I feel that when one is asserting that GMO foods are perfectly safe (true) that it’s important to acknowledge the legitimate controversy over some of the business practices associated with GMO.

If you need, I’ll send hundreds more…. but this one sums up the major problems about GMO, with FULL STUDIES and PROOF of what they claim.
When I want to form an educated opinion, I read both sides of the story…extensively! Then, if I have just a shred of doubt, I check how many BILLIONS the specific industry makes (Monsanto, in this case). The original idea of creating GMO has absolutely nothing to do with our health. It is only a way of producing perfect pretty vegetables/fruit and have NO money loss from infestations, or damaged goods in any way. It is ONLY about money. Actually no….not only money…. it’s money and CONTROL. They tried to pass a law here in Europe that would force ALL of the farmers to buy pre-aproved seeds, for example. If we allow this type of crap t happen it will take no time until ONE company alone controls all of our food! On a totally different topic, they want to do the same with WATER, they want to privatize water!! This people want EVERYTHING that we need to survive in their hands, in their power and generating more income from idiots such as the person who wrote this crappy article!
Open your mind a bit… look ALWAYS at both sides. And yes, there are hundreds of studies proving GMO is NOT safe! And even if t were…. we don’t need it!!!! Why the HELL anyone would think we need to change the DNA of a fruit or vegetable????????????????

Ana, gmoevidence is a farce. They cite Seralini for instance. The results of his study have been repeatedly shown to be false and his paper was retracted. If you actually read the study’s listed on that site you’ll notice that they don’t even support the conclusions that gmoevidence is trying to suggest. They’re just hoping people see sciencey looking stuff and don’t dig any deeper.

“Retraction Watch learned yesterday, however, that Environmental Sciences Europe — a journal where Seralini has published before — was the journal publishing the new version. The journal, part of SpringerOpen, is too young to have an official Impact Factor (IF). Using the same calculation, however, the journal would have an IF of .55. That would place it about 190th out of the 210 journals in the “environmental sciences” category at Thomson Scientific. (For comparison, Food and Chemical Toxicology has an IF of just above 3, and a ranking of 27th.)”

Ah, so retracted and then republished in a dinky journal.

Oh and remember cancer? Apparently Seralini doesn’t – well, he remembers that he said “tumor” but is now arguing that that didn’t mean cancer.

“Now, “tumor” and “cancer” are not necessarily the same thing. But the original paper certainly referred to tumors repeatedly, and Seralini, as Nature reported at the time, “has promoted the cancer results as the study’s major finding, through a tightly orchestrated media offensive that began last month and included the release of a book and a film about the work.”

So, please, in your words, “suck it up”.

(Nor does winning a defamation lawsuit indicate that your science is good… how does that even work?)

The lawsuit Seralini won addressed nothing other than whether or not Seralini and his team purposely used fraudulent evidence. The courts decision didn’t affirm Seralini’s study, it merely said that any flaws in the study could not be considered fraudulent- which is a long way from saying that Seralini and his team made a lot of mistakes.

Honey contains bee propolis-used in South America for thousands of years to address allergies (a person would start consuming in late winter and build a reserve, continuing to consume until end of spring. This approach would ward off future attacks, and make reactions less severe). Garlic and ginger are effective as well, as they are anti-inflammatories (much like turmeric). The histamine reaction causes mucus membranes and respitory tissues to become inflamed. Garlic and ginger lessens the swelling, providing moderate relief.

It is important to remember that natural treatments tend to focus on prevention, rather than treatment. Compared to western medicine, this approach will not be as dramatic in terms of results, but they do work.

That being said, the aforementioned individuals ARE Charlatans, who would be selling elixers from their carriage a couple hundred years ago.

The thing abt coke n Pepsi in India is partially true..not sure abt the air crop dusting part..bt ya here in India many use them instead of pesticides.. They do work marvelously on many pests on which no other pesticides work..
So the comment is partially true in ce post..

the things that i read on that page……… not all of them are ok but some of them……roundup fear mongering? that right there discreded the whole site to me. simple data look up on the company that owns roundup is a nightmare. and spirt science? just cause you dont understand what it is saying dont mean it is stupid and not a good source of info. we are now just learning about things that the “doctors” have been saying for years are untrue! ARG

Spirit science is hippie bullshit. GMO foods are needed to sustain the population. Doctors have helped millions of people survive viruses, etc. With vaccines. Anti-vaxers, anti-gmo people and fear mongers are the ones causing the problem. I understand that it’s rough when companies try to make a profit, but we need these things to survive. Because of people who don’t use vaccinations, curable desises are coming back and actually causing deaths.

Thanks for being such an obvious plant. It’s important for people to know that people like you get paid to respond to this kind of misinformation. I could be wrong about you being a plant and if I am wrong then you’ve obviously have been brainwashed.

Well, Dawn, you’ve obviously kicked the hornets’ nest. The crazies don’t like hearing that they’re crazy, do they? I guess you knew that, though. If not, you do now…
I’m not entirely sure about GMO’s, myself. Some of them appear to produce pesticides of various types, which makes me a little cautious. What I strongly object to about them is their economic model, and the fact that they tend to make the food supply the exclusive property of a few megacorporations. The story of Monsanto and GMO corn is a true horror story. If you don’t know it, here’s a summary:
Monsanto has been suing farmers whose corn crop shows evidence of containing Monsanto’s patented genes. They demand royalty payments from those farmers. This sounds reasonable, until you understand that corn is wind-pollinated, and if anyone grows corn within about a mile of a farm where Monsanto-derived corn is grown, that other farmer’s crop will contain Monsanto’s genes, despite the fact that the farmer didn’t plant Monsanto corn. frankly, Monsanto’s patent ought to be invalidated on the grounds that distribution of its product (the patented genes) cannot be controlled. This, more than anything else, is my big problem with GMO’s.
That aside, I will agree with you on this: The sites you mention are all bogus. My only quibble in that regard is that you limited yourself to ten.

Wow, I couldn’t be happier that you called out this guy as a plant for this Dawn person. Here you have the so-called author of the terrible article with all of these baseless claims. Clearly her motive is to be sensationalistic for the purpose of being outrageous enough to draw attention to herself. Clearly a kardashian wannabe.

Really Brandon? Did you miss the announcement from the WHO recently that stated GMO’s are NOT the way to sustain the world food supply?!? After reviewing the numbers, it’s actually been confirmed that local sustainable organic farming is the ONLY way to go. Maybe you and the author should stop drinking the corporate Kool Aid and start reading more. I’m really appalled at this article. Total op-ed piece biased towards corporate bs. I guess you like the reactionary-based lifestyle, rather than a preventative one? Coke isn’t poison? Ask any oncologist what that much sugar does to the body. Oh and you can also clean toilets and remove paint with it! 🙂 Cheers!

Reanne: Provide a link. I have WHO open in an adjacent window and your claim that such an announcement was made by WHO within the past 5 years is not substantiated. This quote is from their current position paper: “GM foods currently available on the international market have passed safety assessments and are not likely to present risks for human health. In addition, no effects on human health have been shown as a result of the consumption of such foods by the general population in the countries where they have been approved. ”
(http://www.who.int/foodsafety/areas_work/food-technology/faq-genetically-modified-food/en/) Neither WHO nor the FAO support your assertions about organic farming. BTW, you can also clean a toilet and remove paint with baking soda. In addition, very scarce, tentative research might–just possibly–link several forms of cancer to 4-methylimidazole, a chemical byproduct associated with caramel coloring sometimes used in a few brands of carbonated beverage. The sugar content of sodas is irrelevant to any cancer claims. Interestingly, coffee has 3 times as much 4-met as Coke or Pepsi and dark beer has 40 times as much. Why not attack those products instead? Any oncologist who makes the unfounded and inflammatory claims you described should be brought before her/his state medical board for a reprimand or censure.

2 scientists took Monsanto to court to get their scientific test data for Round up. It took 10 years, ten years of civil action for Monsanto to loose and the studies handed over. In duplicate tests male rats came up fine, so why the fuss? When tried on female rats, well holy shit folks, non of them made the 9 month test time, and all died from cancer in the reproductive organs. I use glysophate everyday in my job, couldn’t do without it, but where are the warnings? b

First, all of these people involved *are* nut jobs, I’ll give you that. Something that bothers me, though, is that you seem to not know of the difference between “Holistic” medicine, and “Homeopathic medicine”. There is a reason I’ve included “medicine” the quotes with “Homeopathic” and that’s because it’s horseshit. Now, many holistic healers can be full of it, as well, and those are usually the ones that don’t recognize when something they’re trying isn’t working and/or fail to see that better living through chemistry does NOT mean they’re supposed to forget about pharmaceuticals. Raw honey does have some benefits. It helps with sore throats. It’s anti-microbial:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3609166/

So is coconut oil. Some of the more extraordinary ‘uses’ are probably too good to be true. I’ve never tried them simply because the claims sounded too good to be true. Is coconut oil good for rashes? Yep, and eczema. My daughters have incredibly sensitive skin and break out in rashes from just about everything, even Baby Aveeno products, Oil of Olay, so-called ‘sensitive skin’ products. But not from coconut oil. It takes longer to work, but it does work. Honey won’t work for their allergies, though, because they’re not pollen-related. Fish and shellfish, no cure for that. Turmeric also has some benefits. So does ginger, and cinnamon. These have shown to be true for many, many years. But they’re not a fucking cure-all! If you catch something early and treat it carefully, it usually works. If you catch it too late, go to the fucking doctor – an MD. Mine is holistic and MD. She’s great. We try controlling a thing through diet, doesn’t work, well then lets try these pharmaceuticals. No biggie. I try to not consume too many antibiotics so I don’t do stupid shit like ask for something when all I’ve got is a cold. It doesn’t help anyway, that’s not what antibiotics are for..
I’m just trying to show that the people that don’t believe there is anything past holistic treatments are usually homeopathic idiots. The people that don’t think holistic ideas work, in any capacity, are just plain ignorant. The people in the article definitely took ‘holistic’ waaaaay past its end-point, I just thought I’d bring up the idea that ‘holistic’ medicine does have its uses, so long as you’re not an idiot.

I guess that it’s more about the hurt people experience from all of the more destructive comments, than it is actually about the facts for some of the people responding.

Of course it can be really hurtful for people with holistic views (to any extent) when someone accuses them of being kookoo, a nutjob or anything like that just for believing in that and I do believe it is unnecessary. We have used natural cures for quite some time, before science kicked in. Not all of it was useful, as not all of it is useful now. Also, I must say, there is no tracking back our steps to look at life back then. I don’t believe in miracles. that does not mean holistic medicine can not have its uses. My problem with holistic medicine is that it can be difficult to separate the good holistic therapists from the bad ones, especially when not really familiar with the matter. There are no licenses for holistic therapists that can be withdrawn for talking nonsense and pretending to be a doctor, unfortunately.

Now, for the scientific part, it is also very hurtful to hear some people accusing scientists in general to be charlatans paid by large companies or governments. Personally, I have spent years to become a scientist. Science has proven useful on the road for better health and is now mistrusted by quite a large group of people. I still find it frustrating that my own family will not take my word for arguments in my field of specialization during discussions, for they have read something or seen something on tv, out of context, and find that easier to believe. That being said, I do not support the kind of hateful shaming some “rational” people display. It is not ok to judge people for believing that eating better food, or believing some foods are good for your immune system. At this point, we’ll soon be judging people for finding their calm in yoga or meditation. That is not science’s job.

If you don’t want to take aspirin, for whatever reason, that’s fine. I mean, I too refuse to take antibiotics when I really don’t need to. The ongoing debate on vaccines will of course be a lot more complicated because it’s not only your own health you could be affecting by not vaccinating.

This article is really good. I almost agree with your concern though I appreciate CE, The Mind Unleashed and last but not the least Spirit science. Do check out Spirit science’s youtube channel, their videos are so entertaining. 😀

I was trained as a scientist never really practiced science, just did it for fun. I do, occasionally, try to set my friends straight on some of these sites. I usually tell them to always ask for the empirical evidence and which peer reviewed journal in which it was published. It’s no good trying to tell them that what they are reading is rubbish. I just hope I have a little success.

Our scientific and medical community has become tainted. It’s sad and scary. Don’t take my word for it:

The editor in chief of Lancet, Richard Horton,:

Much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness. As one participant put it, “poor methods get results”. The Academy of Medical Sciences, Medical Research Council, and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council have now put their reputational weight behind an investigation into these questionable research practices. The apparent endemicity [i.e. pervasiveness within the scientific culture] of bad research behaviour is alarming. In their quest for telling a compelling story, scientists too often sculpt data to fit their preferred theory of the world. Or they retrofit hypotheses to fit their data. Journal editors deserve their fair share of criticism too. We aid and abet the worst behaviours. Our acquiescence to the impact factor fuels an unhealthy competition to win a place in a select few journals. Our love of “significance” pollutes the literature with many a statistical fairy-tale. We reject important confirmations. Journals are not the only miscreants. Universities are in a perpetual struggle for money and talent, endpoints that foster reductive metrics, such as high-impact publication. National assessment procedures, such as the Research Excellence Framework, incentivise bad practices. And individual scientists, including their most senior leaders, do little to alter a research culture that occasionally veers close to misconduct.

***

The editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Marcia Angell, wrote in 2009:

It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.

When confronted, this friend said, “well, we’ll see who’s right in time.” The prediction by Natural News has failed to become reality almost a year later.
Well, if this is the case, let’s get rid of all government (which really is a great idea),and all mainstream media. By all means, do listen to someone who is known for a blog and art.

So who made you the one person who knows it all? Some of these pages might post some things I don’t agree with, but all you do is attacking them with no proof of your own. Your opinion is as good – or bad- as theirs. Man, shake off that ego. It seems to me you are just parroting the mainstream media and believing everything Big Pharma says or Monsanto. Or are they paying you to discredit the alternative news sources, by any chance? It’s just a little too coincidental that you are hitting exactly all the right nerves here. Like you are not looking into these topics in a casual way, but in a professional, PAID way..

My thoughts exactly! Cracks me up when people say, We don’t know the effects of GMOS.” Then WHY IN THE WORLD ARE THEY BEING SOLD IN STORES AND FED TO PEOPLE?!?! Are we guinea pigs? No evidence against this list of 10. Well said!

What’s interesting is that a lot of supermarkets (I’m in the UK) are now using it in strengthening their positions /to advertise /market themselves that they no longer stock GM products. Whether it’s true or not the fact they’re saying it says something. They wouldn’t publicly admit being against GMO’s unless there’s something wrong with them! And yes, I’d love to know what Dawn does as a day job too. I don’t believe everything I read on some these sites but I certainly think there’s a lot of useful and interesting information there. I guess she’ll suffer at the end of the day not having a healthy balance when it comes to things like medical treatment holistic /conventional medicine and food and the choices she makes. Her loss. Shaming these websites hopefully won’t do much anyway, people with half a brain know how to filter and they’re the ones that will benefit from awakening to what’s going on.

I agree with you GL. It’s hard not to have a negative reaction to articles like the one Dawn wrote. We are all at different stages in life though. According to Dawn’s understanding and beliefs, what she said is true. According to what I or you believe, we may think she is wrong or misinformed. I think it is important to always see things through others eyes and try to understand where they are coming from. Even if you think your 110% correct, attacking someone’s else’s opinion will get you nowhere. People will always shut down as soon as you come at them in a condescending way. Fact is, MOST people are good people ( I’m sure Dawn is a great person) Nobody has all the answers. We all need each other’s constructive, positive input. Friendliness seems to be a great policy for everything in life. Ego gets in the way for all of us.

Whom she cites for slamming, and how ‘antic’ her design is spells out for me the lady protesteth too much. I can cull from those whose blogs, columns, forums present the most interesting findings, opinions without any lackey from the powers that be in ‘straight’ (traditional) medicine showing me my culling powers — intuition — is off. dawnsbrain impresses me not in the least for the wild and heavy-handed design of this which is bullshit dressed up, disguised, in a style that repels this reader.

Well put. I used to follow “the mind unleashed” and “earth we are one” facebook pages some years ago until I realized the stuff posted was complete rubbish and the followers were not only falling for complete rubbish but also defending the page admins e.g. putting a cut onion in your sock to “absorb” toxins from your body, the fluoride in water issue and tons of fear mongering. At least they were right on the part about “peace of mind”….once you unsubscribe of course!

Actually, it’s scientifically proven that a cut onion absorbs smells. You put a cut one in your fridge and it takes the smell away. It also absorbs germs etc. Which is why during the Black Plague many survivors had cut onions placed next to their beds, the op Jon would turn black within a away or two, and it would be replaced.

Pretty sure there were cut onions next to the people who died, too. Correlation, not causation. Not to mention probably ignoring that if (and what proif do you have that the onions were there) onions were there wroth people that survived, how do you prove they were not present with the people who didn’t survive?

I would rather follow some on your unapproved list. Dr. Mercola rocks and is highly favored!!!! Organic and holistic methods heal rather than kill; and in today’s world, people are tired of being unhealthy and lied to by conventional ways. Show some real proof like comparison studies and tests!!

Interesting how you deny the existence of MRC-5 as a vaccine ingredient and then imply that they (vaccines) are safe… When the Supreme Court itself decreed that vaccines are “Unavoidably Unsafe.” Tell me, where were all your doctors and scientists when that ruling was made?

As someone who has looked at all the science; vaccines are perfectly safe. Anyone who says vaccines aren’t safe automatically sets off my crap and pseudo-intellectual detector. What crack pot, fear mongering, Donald Trump supporting site told you that nonsense? oh wait I know some site that uses big scary words and flawless grammar to make the ignorant blindly agree. Anti vaxxers became a huge movement and suddenly we have measles and rubella back. Let me guess, you’re one of the brain washed who believes that kids that haven’t been vaccinated aren’t a threat to those who have been?

SUPREME COURT OFTHE UNITED STATES
Syllabus
BRUESEWITZ ET AL. v. WYETH LLC, FKA WYETH, INC.,
ET AL.
CERTIORARITO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR
THE THIRD CIRCUIT
No. 09–152. Argued October12, 2010—Decided February22, 2011
The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 (NCVIA or Act) created a no-fault compensation program to stabilize a vaccine market
adversely affected by an increase in vaccine-related tort litigation
and to facilitate compensation to claimants who found pursuing legitimate vaccine-inflicted injuries too costly and difficult. The Act
provides that a party alleging a vaccine-related injury may file a petition for compensation in the Court of Federal Claims, naming the Health and Human Services Secretary as the respondent; that the court must resolve the case by a specified deadline; and that the
claimant can then decide whether to accept the court’s judgment or
reject it and seek tort relief from the vaccine manufacturer. Awards
are paid out of a fund created by an excise tax on each vaccine dose.
As a quid pro quo, manufacturers enjoy significant tort-liability protections. Most importantly, the Act eliminates manufacturer liability for a vaccine’s unavoidable, adverse side effects.

Ummm..can any of you super informed people site the ‘numerous studies’ etc etc that prove GMO’s are completely safe? And can you tell us why the super secret U.S. vaccine court pays out tens of millions of dollars in damages to children whose lives have been destroyed by vaccines every single single year. Or why the government itself just declared that the proven nureotoxin fluoride needs to be removed from our water supplies? You’re the one that is throwing the unproven “facts” all over the place. Project much?

MOST Recent Ridiculousness: This article.
Have you ever heard of the Ostridge that buries its head in the sand to not see the reality?
You are truly miss-informed and obviously would like to remain that way and based on this article, I guess you would like others to stay like that.
Most of the sites you mentioned pride themselves for spreading informed truth based on true scientific facts (as opposed to “Paid” scientific facts which is an oxymoron).
The only one that dramatizes it with a huge dose of fear for effect is Alex Jones.
You might want to wake up and smell reality.

Astounding that you would employ similarly specious and child-like techniques that result in the same levels of inaccuracy as your detractees. Perhaps you should have made it the top eleven? Substance should always be your yardstick, not source.

You only abide to State sponsored Scientific Research, and you have made assumptions in your blog about a handful of sites that have documented on topics where it was deemed appropriate that one or more Dr/Scientists have conducted research into topics that are not PAID by a government Agency. TRUE Skepticism is a virtue and is an attitude of doubt , an tendency to disbelief a critical disposition that takes nothing for granted and suspends judgement when faced with NEW information, Yours is just a different flavor of blind belief. REAL Skeptics question everything especially their own beliefs. A real Skeptic logical Scientific person studies the principles of Logic, and first and foremost applies those principals and endeavors to themselves! All you have shown is that you give lip service to science. If you are wanting documented evidence of everything you read than you better do as you preach? You are only open minded when it suits your beliefs. Your behavior is a symptom of the herd mentality. This is not a casual reference. Science is evolving and so are their tools of measurement, not just in State approved Scientific Studies either. So the fact that you dismiss alternative scientific studies proves that you do not understand the fundamentals and principles of the very thing you claim.

So…where in your studies, Dawn, does a MA in education make you a professional source? I can call myself a scientist because I took science classed while in University but that doesn’t make me a credible source. You can have an opinion but telling others what to read because you feel yourself “smart enough” is rude and your evidence as to why others should stop reading these pages is laughable. I do follow some of these pages and am able to discern what is junk and what isn’t. Not everyone can afford a college education which teaches them to dig deeper, research on their own and find the truth… Instead of demanding what others should do why don’t you try posting an article about how to better teach others to look for what you ‘obviously’ know already…..

It’s sad that you posted this because rather than dispelling any of these websites as conspiracy theorists, you are showing your ignorance. It is you who need to do some research to find out why these articles that you provided as examples of “lunacy” were posted. Just calling them “idiocy” without doing some research or providing some sources that prove how they are wrong makes you just as bad.

This is exactly what is wrong with the world! There’s way too many judgmental hypocritical people who refuse to open their minds to other possibilities and instead choose to follow all the cynical ignorant close minded people who in the end will just be stuck in this never ending cycle. Don’t post things just because you aren’t willing to try and accept a new more positive outlook on life. Just to point out the obvious there is a reason you only have 112 followers and the others have a million or more. At least they are trying to make a difference in this world rather than sticking people in a box.

While I think you need to be very wary about what you read on the internet and do fact checking and certainly Alex Jones is a nut a lot of this in your article is bogus too. I have a lot of allergies and have hypothyroidism – my doctor – a real life doctor at Vanderbilt – who is not new age or any off age at all told me to avoid fluoride because it interfered with my medicine – so I do avoid fluoride because guess what it should not be added to water for a lot of people – also GMOS are bad – I lived in Montana in the heart of wheat country and I have gone to many scientific expos on this topic at MSU and it is just not good for us. Yes science has a place in cultivation but Monsanto is ruining our planet and our food supply. Also there are some natural remedies that work -should you place your entire life in the hands of tumeric – no but it can help in a balanced diet…I eat Kale for my eye sight because my doctor recommended it based on research – a lot of natural remedies do work if used appropriately – so yes you have many great points but you fail on a lot of cylinders too – point taken do your research and discern with common sense.

Also I have complete trust in what coconut oil can do the benefits are endless. It can immensely help Alzheimer’s and dementia patients I saw the life transformation myself while taking care of my grandmother for 5 years. So to go and speculate that Turmeric can’t help Alzheimer’s patients as well is absurd unless you yourself have tested it on yourself or loved ones and can honestly back it up. Everyone’s body is different and reacts differently to everything do you not get that? There are so many temporary cures out there for all kinds of disorders and diseases. A lot of it is in our food and surroundings it’s been there all along and the issue is people don’t care to see that or refuse to accept that meds are one of the biggest causes of death, diseases, and disorders. There are natural and alternative ways to treat so many problems. I don’t understand why if it’s been proven to be good for a person over and over you would choose to toss it to the side and continue shoving pills and preservatives down your throat every day? Why bash those who are at least trying new things to help people live a longer and healthier life? Please explain that to me.

You can ingest all kinds of natural remedies. The problem is on the cellular level. If your cells don’t want it they will not uptake. Pharmaceuticals are designed to pass thru cellular membranes. I believe in some natural remedies it’s just a question of how much they work verses more effect RX.

Ok so don’t follow these people/blogs/websites. Got it. Now what or who DO we follow or turn to for advice? Pepsi? Monsanto? Pfizer? Procter and Gamble? Or do we all just do our own independent research in our home labs and create our own blogs and follow ourselves? They could all be wrong but I’m also suspicious of the new wave of people such as yourself that advocate not listening to anyone’s opinion that just happens to be counter to corporate interests. I’m sure the afore mentioned companies really appreciate your work on their behalf ($$$?)!

Honestly, do you somehow think it makes you a better person to point out others spelling and grammar fails? How does a few simple mistakes lessen someone’s right to be listened to? And how does it make their opinion of less worth than someone who writes as well as an English Proffessor?
I’ll give you a reality check.
It doesn’t.
Does it make you feel smugly superior to speak of others in this holier than thou condescending way?
Do you feel good about yourself?
People like you are loathed the world over.
You’re pathetic.

Oh and the reason spelt doesn’t apply? Spelt is not even a word used within the context of misspelled words! Spelt is A GRAIN OF WHEAT!!! Don’t correct another person’s English if you don’t know it yourself!!

“Spelt” is actually a proper form of the past tense of “spell,” just as “burnt” is a past tense form of “burn.” Your spellchecker might also flag “catalogue,” “amongst,” and “counselor,” but all of those are proper words as well.

Oh, and Lilly, you really ought to take your own advice. Don’t try to correct someone else if you don’t know what you’re talking about. In this case you clearly didn’t know that “spelt” can in fact be used as a past tense of “spell” (despite how simple it is to check a dictionary) and yet you tried to correct someone else who clearly did know. In the process, you outed yourself as both a hypocrite and a fool.

I think nitpicking over minutia like the medicinal value of honey is to miss the point here. All these sites have a proven track record of disseminating misinformation. There’s a reason we say, “A broken clock is right twice a day.”

I cannot agree with your assessment at all – on any of these sites. Just because you don’t believe these things, doesn’t mean they are not very very real. Maybe the reason you lash out at people who are only trying to point out facts that are staring us in the face is because you cannot yet absorb the magnitude of the warnings they are trying to convey. And that’s okay. Everyone is at different stages and some things are So scary that it takes a long time to absorb, comprehend and assimilate. I stand behind all 10 sites.

“My name is Dawn Pedersen. I have been designing for Web and print since 2000, and I’ve been teaching college design courses since 2004. I have provided design services to clients across the globe. I have a BA in fine art and an MA in education. I also have an extensive knowledge of science from university and personal studies.”
Well to be honest this poor written article doesnt reflect any of the studies that you supposedly you have.

You do realize that by bashing social entrepreneurs, you’re the only one on that list that looks like a quack. A quack journalist. I guess everone needs a niche. I do realize that as a blogger you’re simply trying to create outrage to increase traffic but you won’t create readers that stay with you. You’re an idiot for writing this – plain and simple.

Pretty depressing is the fact that in your opinion living in harmony with nature is kookieness and spiritual bullshit, whatsoever. Yes- cultures, religions and borders are bad because the differences between us should make humanity curious of knowing each other. Instead we prefer war and destroying our precious Earth.
The fact that you seem to deny any healing properties of plants makes you only more ignorant.

Wow, This is a really really pathetic attempt to throw everything you don’t understand or like into a box and throw it away. The truth is complicated, and yes sometimes some of these sites make errors, but Dawn there is far more in this world than is dreamt of in your philosophy. Open your mind a bit and you’ll be amazed.

Dawn, there are so many more sites out there like Cop Block, Freethoughtproject, ConservativeTribune, ProgressForward, National News, are just to name a few that speculate or twist information to misinform people because they have a personal agenda to get across.

I love this blog because essentially most these sites (not all) are just spreading information to create fear and conspiracy. Some are trying to do good things, but their information is questionable at best. I’ve lost friends on social media because I have confronted them when they share information based on their biased beliefs that government is out to get us all.

While we have free speech in this country and we cherish the right to have it, spreading fear and misinformation based on greed or to support an agenda is not an ethical use of sharing information. Once we decide to share something on social media, we essentially now become a source for news to everyone who is linked to our news feeds. When we take on that responsibility, then we take on the liability that it can cause in the action that is the result to it. Share bad info or speculation can create a situation where people become misinformed Just because they read it on some site that claims it’s a news site when it has no credentials or scientific based support underlining their claims. Anyone can write an article and claim that an MIT scientist supports the science behind an agricultural claim, but what everyone fails to realize is that MIT doesn’t have an agricultural program of study.

It’s a huge problem with social media. It’s the new way that people want to drive traffic. Go to any of these sites and you’re going to see ad after ad after ad after ad layered all over the pages. When people click on a link, it pluses the number of visits to a page. When the number of visits reach a certain destination, more and more advertisements start appearing on the sites which in return starts generating income towards the owner of the site.

We all need to go to internet school and learn the basics of ethical social media guidelines.

As a fellow writer, I hate to say it, but this article is terrible. You’re doing the cherry-picking that you’re acusing others of doing. You’re chosing one random solitary instance for each website and magnifying it. Several of those sites are actually very good. I would recommend either not writing articles that focus on bashing others (in other words, just come up with good content on your own), or backup your statements with some better evidence.

I must say I was hoping for some good information here. Once I got started on your countdown of so called “busted myths” I quickly felt I was just reading
a very biased article over very good controversial subjects. Referring to spirituality as kookiness? Ridicules! I hope people see through this poorly laid out support for the system.

If spirituality is kookoo than materialistic consumeristic and capitalistic ways is defiantly on your agenda. Not free
Thinking love and coming together as human kind.

I have pasted it above so you can find it easier. The bottom line is that in specific dosages, it appears to interact chemically with some of the elements involved with a wide variety of ailments but does not “cure” AD in any sort of sense that would improve the condition of an afflicted person. It simply changes certain biochemical metrics by which the disease is evaluated. The article you linked clearly states in its conclusion that when the chemical property that causes these changes is discovered it “could lead” to improved treatments or therapies. This does not constitute a “cure”.

Your link regarding honey didn’t post as I’m sure you intended, but you would be better served to provide a study from the NIH than “springer” (whatever that is) to make your case. If honey is a “medicine” then so is chicken soup. I’m not saying any medicinal properties of bee vomit shouldn’t be investigated, but if it does react with inflamed laryngeal tissue in a beneficial way, we should be able to quantify it and use those properties to alleviate other forms of human suffering (hemmorrhoids perhaps?)

If there is any beneficial information posted on or originating from any of these sites, it is almost certainly by accident, and would not be worth the effort to find. Her skepticism is very warranted.

Great article. For all the people who chastised you for making a few errors in fact checking, check her mostly true to bullshit ratio. Have a feeling it’s much better than all of the sites listed here that you are defending and definitely better than fox news without nearly the same level of resources. Oh, and lastly, anyone who uses the term “big pharma” and insinuates conspiracy almost always needs some of the medication they make for mental issues or serious therapy. Please do a list of sites that people post those ire inspiring links to promote left or right wing propaganda that are lacking in facts like RAWSTORY… Hell, I’ve been thinking about creating a snopes of Facebook type of site if I could find some more people like you Dawn…

The problem is we don’t even have untainted science any more. It’s not a safe bet to venerate the scientific or medical community. If you have a major medical crisis (which I hope you don’t), you may be disheartened. I’m

This dawnsbrain is so off the mark. Are you just looking for attention. You are one of the sheeple I see. Wake up and get real ! What qualifies u to believe that these are bogus sites. Sorry but you have got your head in the sand !

idk about your critiques on these pages. i agree about the fear mongering not really being very progressive… but i think a CE and Dr. Mercola are DEFINITELY bringing a legitimate voice to legitimate concerns that are representative of legitimate collective concerns. Overall though, i disagree and find these sources INCREDIBLY valid, sharing ted talks and scientific journals etc on subjects that are inherently dissenting with, what seems to be the authors personal political views. Calling CE all misinformation all the time is pretty harsh and not really accurate, and such an overarching generalization, that it leaves holes ALL over your claim. Like misinformation in comparison to what information… your sources of information?… which you then didn’t bother to share, which would shed light onto the accurate info you’re claiming to be in on, which you are in turn basing the premise of your argument and judgements from? I say BS.

personally I didn’t find your criticisms very constructive or useful in the sense that your aren’t suggesting better sources that are disseminating this VITAL information,in a more ‘appropriate’ and accurate ways. These sources ARE LEGITAMATE simply on the premise that they inspire debate to get REAL answers, whether their claims are false, which these informations sources are attempting to represent… Dissent gets us to the truth.

Anyone who adheres 100 % to this “skeptics” advice as to any one site/page is a fool. Careful “Skeptics of the Universe” your arrogance is showing. The above pages aside, there are many issues/topics your page casts aside dangerously, ignoring some very real skepticism based on personal experience.

What a callous way to make a living. Youre a fascist in training. Where does a web designer get the audacity to pass judgement on people that you couldnt hold a candle to?
I worked for a doctor who had cancer who cured himself with means that you wouldnt approve of and he has gone on to teach integrative medicine to 10’s of thousands of brilliant physicians around the world. Look him up on Google. He is a leading, cutting edge integrative oncologist, hematologist, immunologist and nutritional physician who has worked at some of the greatest medical institutions in America….Dwight McKee MD.

Sorry Dawn, but you lost at credibility with the “Round Up fearmongering” comment. Who exactly are YOU shilling for? Several countries have banned this toxin and this country is shamefully behind with a lack of government regulation and a chemical lobby that self-regulates while poisoning the masses with thousands of untested chemicals.

Several of the sites you so joyfully pounced on have provided a lot of sage advice for many. Case in point, Mind Body Green on turmeric, which is indeed an an anti-inflammatory that many naturopaths recommend to their patients.

Honey is also beneficial and my allergies have been much less severe this spring as I have been eating raw local honey. I also use coconut oil for many uses, not just cooking. It’s an anti-fungal, a moisturizer and much more. Try it in your hair, you’ll love it.

I will grant you that Alex Jones is a douche, but the bulk of what you have written is just mean spirited, snarky drivel.

Certainly seems like a hastily written article that lumps in so many issues and subcultures together. Yes, she did point out a lot of bullshit out there. NEWS FLASH: THERE is a SHITLOAD of BS all over the internet. You could through a dart blindfolded and hit some page that tries to argue Obama is a reptilian muslim. Of all the sites you mentioned, you missed all the worst offenders save for Alex Jones. Many of the sites get into spirituality and lifestyle, things that are intrinsically subjective and constantly evolving. To criticize their scientific accuracy is like saying Catholic priests occassionally molest boys. NO SHIT! And really, criticizing the desire that people forget their differences and become a global nation instead a collection of people who cannot get along is an odd position to take. Who doesn’t desire world peace? Even if it is a goal that seems unnattainable, it is only that way because of our apathy for change and the belief we can make a difference. All in all, a very pessimistic and ignorant article that uses an appeal to Authority like its a trip to the playboy mansion.

I agree with Srishti. This is a poorly written article and you ignore solid facts and living proof and accounts of some of these things artually working. Not to mention the fact you had no information to prove your point. I’m a student in college trying to obtain a degree in Health and Wellness. There are many things that I am studying in school but I do know the importance of research and cited work. Where is your research? Where are your citations that prove what you have stated here? And also where is your degree that would prove to me you really know what you are talking about. You have a BA in fine arts. Cool, but that teaches nothing about science, and I’m sure your MA in education probably didn’t teach you much about science. Maybe the basics, but who knows. Maybe not since you are teaching design courses. You have extensive knowledge about science but that tells me nothing. I have extensive knowledge in psychology but you don’t see me out there writing articles about different mental disorders and diagnosis. I also have extensive knowledge in natural healing remedies. Still I’m not being biased and writing about things online. I will wait until I have my degree and I will encourage those who are interested to do the research for themselves. I suggest you do some research for yourself. Srishti pretty much blew your whole article out of the water by posting documented research to disprove your “theory”.

You really need a reality check. You should probably become #1 of your own article. The above are only trying to help and feed you information. Too bad your closed-minded, “science-based” information is all you’ve got to go on. I truly feel sorry for you. Good luck making it when shit really does hit the fan. And…to all of you “enjoying the comments on the post”, go fly a kite. You’ll be just as useful to the rest of us.

You use your own personal beliefs (or what CNN told you) and state them as fact. You have so many blatantly misinformed statements it isn’t worth even getting into. Someone once told me to never argue with a fool because after awhile people won’t be able to tell the two of you apart. I’ll take that advice and not get into this one too deeply with you.

You are SO STUPID to put Dana up here. She knows her stuff and is more about educating people about veganism, and how to eat and live clean. Also, GMO studies have only been funded by the COMPANIES THAT MAKE GMO PRODUCTS. yeah, that is not bias or anything. we have NO IDEA if GMOS are safe or not, they havent been around for that long, so enjoy eating your pesticide filled food and dying from some crazy disease when you are older because of the gmo food your body is forced to digest

In fairness there is truth in this but also some real claims to some real scientific evidence based healing properties of say. Tumeric or cucurnim. In reality though Dawn, you do not have the understanding nor the ability to take this article to where it would need to be. Writing posts like this should be done with serious research and you should have sufficient evidence to back up your claims.

This is so poorly done that it has become and advertisement in favor of these sites. Where is your Phd? If you are going to trash someone with a phd (i.e. Dr Mercola) you ought to have one in the same discipline.

I read through this and laughed. Coke is safe to drink? Yes I drink Coke every now and than but really isn’t good for you at all. GMO safe my dad is a farmer and refuses to allow his crops to be modified. It’s chemicals that are added and not meant to be there. How about you do the proper research before discounting anyone or anything.

Why is it that opinionated people like you scoff at eating healthy, spirituality and natural remedies but fail to call out the real travesty in this country – corporate media conglomerates that knowingly lie and instill fear into its viewers all for political pandering. The sites you mention above (except for, perhaps, Alex Jones) are mainly harmless, while news organizations like Fox knowingly encourages people to vote for policies and engage in actions that are clearly against their best interests. If you really care about the spreading of fear and misinformation, you should put Fox News at the top of your list.

Thought the article was a good one and used logical arguments and statements, with facts, to get your points across.

Wasn’t disappointed by the low standard of intelligence displayed by those who disagree with what you’ve written. If people are going to follow these sites religiously in the first place, then there are always going to be indicators that lower than average intelligence levels are on display.

I was surprised that no-one resorted to the seemingly default setting of CAPS LOCK when making their “argument” against your article. (Maybe they’d worn out that key from overuse?)

Keep up the good work, fight the good fight against the pseudoscientists, charlatans, quacks and snake oil salespeople. (Because being a fearmongering parasite is an equal opportunity occupation.)

You really don’t know your information! I have done my research and have found that the one’s that I follow and share of these you’ve mentioned are accurate! I really have to question where you get your information! Brainwashed, are you bought out by Big Pharma and Monsanto!?! You really make me wonder! I changed my nutrition before I followed any of these and have seen a dramatic difference in my health! I don’t feel sick and tired all the time before like I was before!

This is absolutely ridiculous –
Here’s a few things to do with “Dawn’s brain” because you clearly dont need to be publishing articles on anything.
1. Get a life.
2. Hot yoga.
3. Meditation.
4. Try doing some of your own personal research and write about something that means something rather than attempting to smear the names and opinions of other people, then maybe, just maybe click “post”
Sincerely,
A loyal follower of whomever I see fit –

This is an interesting article. I think the biggest thing to take out of it is to take everything you read online (whether it is from these sites or not) with a grain of salt.

I happen to like alternate ways of thinking because I am a writer so its always fun to explore the weird aspects/ stories of the world. But that doesn’t mean I believe or buy into everything I read.

Some holistic articles can be useful. Some science articles can be useful. There is something to be learned from all kinds of different sources. It isn’t necessarily bad to keep an open mind. But you should also question everything you read/ watch/ etc. It is a balance.

Funny this comes out on the heels of 2 published studies (just out) about the dangers of fluoride in our water supply… oh and the UN and World Health Organization admitting glyphosate ‘probably’ causes cancer. I don’t agree with all 10 of the choices, but certainly some of these folks are proving to be right more and more, but as Socrates said “When teh debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser” so no surprise to just pick random comments and put them down. That’s real journalism (sarcasm for those who didn’t know)

What a Narcissistic close minded uneducated nit wit!!! FRANKLY THANK GOD FOR ALL THOSE PAGES!, and people willing to go against the status quo, if YOU took the time for some self education and Research versus this mainstream media BRAINWASHING education you evidently have …you would know those are Very credible resources!! Uugghhh Really feel sorry for you kind of people … And IT REALLY PISSED ME OFF this kind of ignorance MAKES IT HARDER FOR OTHERS TO LEARN THE TRUTH!!! Because someONE MAY actually believe you! You are BRAiN DAMAGED … Maybe you should lay off the Big PHARMA, MONSANTO kool aid you’ve been drinking!! And WAKE UP!! Wow!!

Thanks for the tips of what other pages TO Follow. You probably use snopes.com to prove things are debunked too. Yawn. What If what you have been taught your whole life is wrong? Dig deeper next time before you criticize, you might learn something.

Dawn,
Your article really brought the nutcases out .
You’re entirely right. The only possible quibble is how you order the charlatans.
Natural News is my number one, but that’s just personal preference.
Any of the ignorant supporters of these sites simply need an education in science. But they won’t get one, because they’re lazy. So much easier to believe in magic and conspiracies, than to actually learn how the world (you know, physics, chemistry, biology) actually works.
Keep up the good work!

Still laughing at the ‘ridiculous ness’ of YOUR article. Have you notjing more productive to do? We have a name for your syndrome in Oz…its called tall poppy. Do think that your little wall kicking article will put a dent on any if these sites? Like Dr Mercola…u arent the first and you wont be the last. Do yrself a favor and do something good today

proven by real scientists that fluoride is not needed and is harmful, especially to children, in large doses.

GMO’s have not been around long enough for a long term study of their true affects

many other glaring problems with what you say. I will say that extremists on any subject are probably a little off base, but there is some truth to natural healing, what do you think humanity did before lab concocted drugs

Congratulations, your article has gone viral with everybody you upset.
I guess that is what is called: bad publicity is better than no publicity.
Your article is still absolute crap as it is completely unfounded unlike the sites you are pointing your finger at.
Just notice how many fingers on your hand are pointing back.

I don’t even know where to begin!!! I really think that you need to delete your page and in fact I think that everybody should do quite the opposite …they should read and share from the 10 pages that you have cited and never read anything on Dawns Brain again. It’s very hard not to think that this pages really is written by Monsanto and some pharmaceutical companies who are trying to shove toxic substances down the publics throat for profit! Sadly from the comments some people will fall for your misinformation!

#10 Alex Jones.
On many topics, in my opinion he pushes what he can not prove and his own opinion as fact.
#9 Most of the food I and my family eat are grown at our home, how ever good or bad there are things added to food, I like a good steak but will not raise my own cow. (cow poo stinks) that’s a risk that I choose for my self to take.
#2 Spirit Science..My fav
Jordan and his friends have many video post’s forums and other sources to view online.
If you have ever watched any of it you would know that they say have you’re own experience. They do not say that any of it is in any way fact. They say just to listen and decide for you’re self.

No place in this have I once seen you invite any one to think for them selves. My opinion of you’re opinion sucks more then you’re opinion but hey decide for you’re self but please stop passing off opinions as fact, other wise you are no better then the sites you have chose to form you’re opinion on.
To any one who has actually read all this, Please don’t “fact check” actually learn both sides of it and decide for you’re self. Propaganda in any form is still propaganda

i am all for healthy skepticism, and especially with regards to the numerous conspiracy theories noted above and floating through our social media. However (you knew it was coming), I would like to point out that getting especially adamant about something can sometimes lead one astray. Not all so-called “natural remedies and treatments” are bunk. Some are for sure; many are not or offer good ancillary treatments. A little balance is all I ask. Lastly, I would like to offer one comment by way of illustration. Run a quick search for “honey antibacterial”. While you will certainly find random natural health websites proclaiming its fabulousness, you will also find several citations of peer reviewed scientific studies regarding honey’s antibacterial properties (The Lancet isn’t too shabby). Everyone should ask good questions and check their sources, and raise an eyebrow whenever always and never appear, since such absolutes are rare. So, while I agree in general with the skeptical stance taken in this post to some of the sketchy claims made by enthusiasts, I would be inclined to dig a bit deeper. For myself, I’ve been confused by the GMO brouhaha, because what I’ve read in credible sources don’t suggest health-related concerns, which seems to be the focus of so much of the excitement. On the other hand, there are some concerns regarding its challenges to varied seed stock (ecological implications) and its monopolizing of the markets (economic implications). I still don’t have a position on GMOs (and maybe I don’t need one), but I’m learning a lot, especially the need to read more (from credible sources), ask more questions, and not assume that just because an individual I like and find credible on one issue has necessary got everything straight on a different issue.

I have had Lyme disease now for 27 years. It is a disease that there is no cure for and a disease that modern medicine has not been able to figure out. “Science” has nothing to offer me except a port in which years of antibiotics will be fed. The antibiotics alone could kill me and there is no guarantee that they will work. For certain they will cost more than the mortgage on my house. So most of us with Lyme spend years researching, reading, advocating for others, writing about what we find and asking millions of questions of mainstream doctors/naturopathic doctors/osteopaths/ homeopath’s/researchers and many more. (I have also met many a cancer patient that has done the same.) We are not deluded or stupid as you suggest here. We study our bodies and our diseases diligently. Some of these sites have very valid information, based on research that is very helpful. I have watched many get results from what you so easily and irresponsibly discredit . To write such an article is insulting to those of us that live with chronic illness. Perhaps you should have interviewed some of us before writing such an article, those of us that live researching and sharing what we find. We are the ones that know. You my dear, know so little yet are too willing to pretend you know it all.

Dawn Pedersen and son Theo
My name is Dawn Pedersen. I have been designing for Web and print since 2000, and I’ve been teaching college design courses since 2004. I have provided design services to clients across the globe. I have a BA in fine art and an MA in education. I also have an extensive knowledge of science from university and personal studies.

Just thought I’d share what you say about yourself. Stick to making websites and teaching junior college. You’ve shown a perfectly amazing example of hypocrisy by talking about things you have no personal experience trying nor understanding of. I’m amazed at why 4.7 million people aren’t following DAWN AND HER GIANT BRAIN.
Good luck with your continued smear campaign on “misinformation”…
Oh wait, THATS WHAT YOU JUST POSTED ??

i don’t know which is more disappointing, the fact that some people take these sites seriously, or the majority of comments on this thread. these facebook pages are full of mindless drivel. i do love the frequent comments by “skeptics” of the type who think they’re being logical, while having no understanding of what logic is, or how to construct a logical argument.

Do you own shares in a drug company??? Most of the pages you refer to relate to natural methods of healing or medicines. You obviously don’t believe in these methods….in my experience some of these things do help and usually can’t hurt. I would put your page on this list as clearly you only believe in prescription drugs which often cause more side effects than the cure!!! How about you just let others try and decide for themselves before creating such a stupid top 10 list clearly based on your unresearched and biased opinion!!!

1 This is not an attack and there is no strawman fallacy. A strawman fallacy is misrepresenting a persons argument. These are quotes\screenshots from the website used as examples of unsupported positions that the authors assert.

2 Having an open mind/being skeptical is simply being willing to change a belief in response to new evidence. It is not accepting something just because you like it or want it to be true. In short most comments using the terms “open minded” or “skepticism” are confusing then with credulity.

3 “Wake up” or “educate yourself” are laughable hypocrisies. These sites do not educate. To a large extent they use emotional pleas and fear to make a point without scientific evidence from actual peer-reviewed sources that show results in human based studies that yield the same results when repeated . When they do provide resources they are usually not credible or are misinterpreted. There are scam and pay-to-publish journals and Wikipedia is not source. A bit of research on the journal and checking citations is a good start to identifying BS. Many statements on these pages are demonstrably false (ie that the dangers of vaccines outweigh the benefits)

4 These sites are making claims so the burden of proof is on them not on those pointing out that they fail to meet that burden. Anecdotes are not evidence. This is grade school stuff. That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence

5 Not all opinions are created equal. A feeling about something has nothing to do with its truth value. Your evidence-free opinion is not as valid as an opinion with scientific support, and without solid evidence any reason for believing claim is not independent of its truth value.

6 Yes of course they will get some things right occasionally and some things will not be as wrong as others. Focusing on those exceptions is not honest and is cherry picking. Several comments brought up less egregious claims like honey and turmeric. Turmeric may have some potential most of the promising research has not been done on humans. However given the potential scientists are studying it but even the CAM based scientists point out that so far pilot study’s on humans have not borne out these predictions, however it is still promising enough that real scientists are doing real research to find medical uses.

7 Natural does not equal good and the dosage makes the poison. Using turmeric as an example high doses can cause damage to the liver, gallbladder damage, nausea , reflux, and hould be discontinued 2 weeks prior to surgery in part due to its potentially dangerous interactions with drugs. Supplements are not regulated and don’t carry warning labels that does not mean the always safe or that they even contain a the item listed. A recent study showed 84% of herbal supplements did not contain the advertised products and they are not obligated to provide evidence for their claims.

8 Eating healthy balanced meals, exercising and avoiding junk food will almost always provide positive results. There is science supporting many aspects of this there is very little for most fad diets and supplements.

Re. 7) NSAIDs have far worse side effects after long term use than Curcumin. I have used both clinically and would prescribe Curcumin long term over NSAIDs every time both for efficacy and less side effects. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2637808/

you don’t know anything about medicine, right? I think, if you have no idea about a thing, you should stop hating. just because you don’t understand, doesn’t meen, that turmeric and garlic don’t work. (example)
You are just as dangerous and rediculous with your post, as all those pages you are talking about. Doesn’t bring a good light on you. And now i’m just stopping to share your post. Loosy, sister. keep going with design, brain is not yours.

Years ago before all this vaccine hoopla started up I started investigation of my own on them due to problems my oldest child developed after a round of vaccines.
Vaccines do in fact contain the ingredients Mr. Jones lists as well as aborted fetal cells. Go to the CDC website and search for vaccine ingredients. It’s all listed there on the CDC website thanks to the freedom of information act. Each vaccine has an ingredient list and each ingredient has its own side effects listed…..pretty scary stuff.

While Mr.Jones can get out there in left field a bit, on this post you showed he was 100% correct.

I don’t know about the rest of the sites you listed and I don’t care. However, before you call someone or some site liars and fear mongers, do you your research.

Just wondering when this world will realize that there’s great power in proper science, but also in ancient medicine and natural remedies. Our bodies, minds and souls have way more potential than the medical arena gives it credit for. Still, medicine has its place. One doesn’t have to delete the other. The Earth and what it naturally produces has given powerful remedies to people for thousands and thousands of years. This ridiculing way is what is ridiculous in my opinion. There’s valuable information on these sites, but all may not suit everybody. To blindly follow knowledge, science and medicine only, is to deny the opportunity to hear and understand new ways. The holistic arena has great things to offer, too. The two ought to go hand in hand. To judge before we understand has to subside so an open discussion, with acceptance at the forefront, can be cultivated. Clear discernment rather than opinionated ways, ought to be encouraged. This idiotic way of shooting down the potential for growth and healing in new ways, is like a kindergarten row. Behavior which ought to stop before we enter mature age. The information on some of these web pages has truly helped me and my family, as has traditional doctors. I work in the field of natural healing and emotional healing techniques. I’ve seen tremendous results in people through the processes I’ve taken them through, which I am trained to do by the way, through extended education in these areas. The change in diet and withdrawal of toxins has been potent for so many as well, including myself. Also, the energy of the universe holds mystic things we still don’t know much about, but try deep meditation and you may get in touch with some of it. Science is approaching the same from a different direction and both are needed, I’d say. Our inner world is vast, but you will only discover it if you are willing to get out of the head and try. Direct experience beats knowledge any day, even Einstein said that. To purely judge, curse and ridicule new ways, is based on fear anyway. Some things in this world are harmful, so let people discover what is best for them without the arrogance. These web pages offers alternative methods and beliefs, which, if you don’t feel it’s for you, you don’t have to choose. Accept that others do, though. Besides, the unknown has scared people for eons. Personally I think this world has had enough of living in fear. I think it’s time to work together more and hear less of ridiculing articles as the one above. I think it’s time to accept our difference and welcome the fact that we may explore different routes in life. We can choose. That is our freedom, and perhaps also the road to peace.

Mainstream science is no different than mainstream religion and dogma. The basic tenet of, “don’t bother me with facts, my mind is made up” runs rampant due to the human ego being in the driver’s seat much of the time. Humans used to think the world was flat. Humans also thought the Sun orbited the Earth. People have been killed for disagreeing with mainstream scientific thinking and religious doctrine.

In order for our species to continue to evolve, we MUST think differently and try different things. To condemn everyone on your list as well as some of their information, without personally exploring what they have to offer, trying it or even being open to the slightest possibility that they may be onto something, is extremely small-minded.

Please do the world a favor and grow some consciousness and perhaps even some humility. Humanity knows very little (but thinks otherwise) about our own planet or what exists in this Universe. We’re a mere speck of life in the infinite cosmos. Our time on this orb we call home – Earth, is not even an infinitesimally small fraction of a millisecond on the timescale of our own solar system, not to mention the Milky Way galaxy.

Granted, some of these folks’ messaging is rather sales-driven, but don’t confuse their energy or personalities with possible truths. Let us never forget, mainstream society/leadership in our very recent human history have burned women accused of being witches, tortured people for not “accepting Jesus Christ as their own personal Savior”, exterminated millions of Jews for being inferior people, overrun and taken over countries for their resources, perpetrated wars over false events that never occurred (e.g. Gulf of Tonkin).

Open up your mind and look at the history behind some of these things like Coconut Oil, Turmeric and other subjects, such as Alex Jones’ work. He may be animated and ‘out there’ but you can find very interesting things that would agree with his findings should you be brave enough to lift your head out of the sand and stop blindly following what you’re told by mainstream media. Once you do, you cannot go back to being a ‘sheeple’.

My doctor read your article. He has worked in the medical field for over 15 years. He said “She is an uneducated fool on medical health. Correcting the body from the inside is key, instead if taking masking drugs to bandaid a problem. If she actually had a medical degree, she would understand this. “

This article speaks of somebody who is so narrow minded that they will miss massive changes in modern thinking. You are actually a flat-earther par none. Modern science is changing everyday and more and more natural things are proofed to be valuable by real scientists. And yes Coke is a poison, just look at some of the people who consume lots of it!

Just because you don’t understand something doesn’t give you the right to mock it. But you sound like a main stream media kind of sheep, who believes all her government. Big pharma, etc tell her. Smh……Yup, the ‘wackos’ are out there, er um here…

An answer to Srishti, Example #1.
After reading the whole paper here is an extract that can summarize the results.
From section “Conclusion”:Based on the main findings detailed above, curcumin will lead to a promising treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. The clinically studied chemical properties of curcumin and its various effects on AD shows the possibility to do further research and develop better drugs based on curcumin for treating AD.[…]
The molecule found inside turmeric, curcumin, is promising, turmeric itself is mainly useless. All the studies and clinical trials refer to the molecule after isolation and purification, not the turmeric as a whole food, exactly like salycilic acid is not willow and digoxigenin is not foxglove.

hey Dawn. I happily follow 3 of these and am a much healthier person because of it. If you want to stick to conventional ways of thinking have at it. You will continue to “enjoy” the rapid decline of the health of the people of this country. I chose to get off that train. Appreciate this article because I have a couple more people to look to follow now. Wish you the best in your health and happiness.

Honestly, get off your high horse. Who are you to tell people that what they enjoy reading, and what they believe in, is wrong? Sure, you might not agree with it all, but there’s no need to write a whole page bagging it out. Be a bit more open minded into other people’s opinions, would you? The world has enough close minded people already.

Dear Dawn,
Who’s the nut here? Sounds to me like you’re the one without the legitimate information. You’re the one who has to deal with the consequences of sticking your head in the sand and having your rear end in the air. Maybe it’s just all those chemicals the government has fed you have effected your brain. You’re one if their puppets! Instead of spreading your negative critical lies about natural healing, why don’t you put that GMO apple down and give natural food a try. I mean, all these plants and roots and bushes and minerals have been here since God created the earth. He gave them to us for healing and before science even existed, people used them for their healing needs. And Dr. Mercola is one of the ONLY doctors I listen to and since I have, his information, which IS backed up with science and studies, has helped me and my family get healthier. So take off those manufactured shoes and get outside and dig uour toes in the cool soft sand, dirt or grass. You might actually like it. As for vaccines, there IS evidence of those disgusting and toxic ingredients in them. You have not done your research. Where do you think they get the live viruses? They get them from aborted babies who had them. Vaccines are a sorcerer’s poison! You need to stop spreading lies and get your head out if the sand and wake up, look at what’s going on around you honey! If you don’t you will regret your critical choices to those who actually did listen and make the change.

Lady, I can appreciate part of what you say … but truth be known, you probably should drink the kool-aid. Your”facts” are skewed at best. And while there were a few of those that I would agree with you on, I have yet to understand how any rational person can try to say that’s GMO’S are perfectly safe. Site one extensive study done by a group of scientists that were not employed by the manufacturers or government stating their complete safety. You can’t, because it’s never been done. You should check your facts.

To the folks saying turmeric is great, honey is great, etc., etc. – there aren’t any number of clinical trials that have proven either to be the case, let alone on a consistent basis, let alone studies done in recent times.

Here’s how science works – you have to reproduce your results over and over again. Not just you, but anyone else who tries it. IE., this is from 2014:

“Commenting on the study, Dr Laura Phipps, from Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: “This early-stage study highlights the effects of aromatic turmerone in rat brains, but the findings are a long way from determining whether this compound could help fight diseases like Alzheimer’s.

“It’s not clear whether the results of this research would translate to people, or whether the ability to generate new brain cells in this way would benefit people with Alzheimer’s disease.

We’d need to see further studies to fully understand this compound’s effects in the context of a complex disease like Alzheimer’s, and until then people shouldn’t take this as a sign to stock up on supplies of turmeric for the spice rack.

“The death of brain cells is a key feature of Alzheimer’s, and investment in research is crucial to understand how this cell death occurs and how to intervene.

“It takes many years for fundamental research such as this to be translated into new treatments, and for the best chance of success we need to see a range of approaches being taken.”

I agree with James, where do you find your info on “extensive GMO trials before they hit our plate”? That is absolutely false & untrue, there have been no long term studies done on the effects of GMO’s & the body. The scientists that say they are safe are getting paid to do so without studies to prove it & the third party scientists who are proving they might cause considerable harm are called crackpots. All I know is that we have an obese & sick country and something is wrong with what we are calling ‘food’ today, considering most of what it contains lacks anything close to real.

Wow, well done Dawn, you’ve clearly touched a raw nerve with the tinfoil hat crackpots via this excellent post. To watch them all turn on you is kind of disheartening, but I guess it’s keeping them off the streets, for a while. I never knew there were so many gullible fools out there who absorb and believe the self-serving bull-crap these peasant-minded websites peddle. Notice how sensitive the ‘believers’ are, too? Due to the deluge of negative comments on this post I’ll wager the link to this page is being shared through message boards on each website listed complete with exhortations to come here and slander you. Keep up the excellent skeptical work. There are still some of out there who are sane and rational and whose woo-woo detection radar is as finely honed as ever. Please do not be deterred, stick to your guns. Regards from the UK.

You certainly had to know that as soon as you posted this, the owners of these facebook pages would tell their followers and they would come rushing over to their defense. Which appears to be exactly what has happened. *sigh

I think you do have some great points and I agree with your overall suspiciousness of many of these pages and “professionals”. I also applaud your bravery in posting, knowing good and well they would send an army after you.

While I do agree that some people take things to an extreme when it comes to Nature Alternative Medicine or Conventional Medicine. To declare that Western medicine is the way to go is a little ignorant. Western medicine is geared to make money. pharmaceutical companies dont want people to be healed they design there medicines in order to mask symptoms. The money is in keeping people alive with their ailments not in healing them. Many of these Pharmaceutical companies shelf proven cures in preference of treatments that make them more money. Also to say coke is healthy is also an ignorant statement. High Fructose Corn syrup is the reason why there is a major spike in dieabetes in this country. So Please Dawn better you stop spreading all this misinformation and become more aware of whats going on.

You should check your own links, at least two contradict what you’re saying. the ABCnews link says right in it that YES INDEED Vaccines DO have aborted fetal cells. Much? Nope. But they do. And that’s where they came from. The CDC’s own websites lists ingrediencts in vaccines and yes, mercury (thimerisol) is in there, at least in flu vaccines, as well as formaldehyde, aluminum, and others. A quick fact checking pulls up honey being used in healing wounds and cough suppression. Your link from WebMD about tea tree oil…talks about all the uses of tea tree oil.

Well, from reading the comments, I’d say you’ve hit a few nerves with your list. I have found that science is most often denied by those who lack not only an understanding of science, but also the inability to understand science. Much like our primitive ancestors, who sacrificed virgins because of eclipses, their ignorance is manifested through fear. And the fearmongers are quite prevalent on Facebook.

And your documentation that these sites are presenting bullshit? Some of them are actually referring to legit studies, which you have failed to do in each one of your points. So why should we trust YOU?

“My name is Dawn Pedersen. I have been designing for Web and print since 2000, and I’ve been teaching college design courses since 2004. I have provided design services to clients across the globe. I have a BA in fine art and an MA in education. I also have an extensive knowledge of science from university and personal studies.”

What sets you apart from food babe and the rebel dietician? I didn’t know who they were before I saw this article but they look fit and healthy. I think I’ll start reading thier blogs.

I absolutely LOVE all the comments here along the lines of “You can’t handle the magnitude of the truth,” “you need to be more OPEN MINDED,” etc. All this mindset does is foster a feeling of superiority, because YOU are the one that’s in on The Truth. Only You are smart enough to know what They don’t want you to know!

You my dear are part of the problem with society. The people reading these pages have a mind of their own and clearly want to look outside the box. My guess is You are part of the masses that blindly follow what the government sells you. I urge you to do more research with an open mind.

If “harmless new-agey spiritual stuff and kookiness” is about expanding our minds and creating insite about ourselves and our universe not by labeling and matching “tangible” understanding, but through actual experience, then count me in. I dont agree with everything spirit science posts but from what i have seen, they have wisdom that trancends what is definable by logic or by proof. Faith requires neither and empowers us to stop substituting the truth of staking our claim to fact through measurements and calculations. Measurements cannot be made permanently in a vast ever changing universe and annomolies contradict mathematics and other basic forms of human understanding. Spirit is energy, energy is change, change is reality and our individual realities begin and end with our existences. I would listen to the universe before anyone else’s so called “proof”. Its not about what or how we sense or understand anything, its about what lessons we learn from any moment from everything. Without faith, fact no longer exists.

Sorry but I don’t agree with your article . Many of those site are great . I don’t like GMO , coke is bad for you , I can go on . You should really do a bit more homework before you slam these pages . I will be letting the ones I like know about you . And I support most of them . Thanks tho

Alex Jones is problematic, in one way I think it is good that an apparently obviously paranoid and delusional individual is able to hold it together enough to make a good living from his delusions.
On the other hand this monetisation of his paranoia is doing nothing to cure him of such beliefs and is probably helping to reinforce the delusions of other mentally unstable individuals.

It is I think odd though that such a whack-a-loon is able to hold delusional beliefs and function well enough to to make a successful business out of them. Generally people that far gone are more likely to be seen wandering the streets, inappropriately dressed and shouting at cars.
So maybe the Alex Jones persona is nothing more than a cynical con to make money from notoriety.
In which case he is nothing more than cynical and thoroughly despicable parasitic vermin.

WEB MD? A website that promotes the agenda of large pharmaceutical companies? Let me guess, you work for them, right? While I agree with you about Alex Jones, most of the rest of the article is carrying water for big pharma.
While the folks who want to sell me medicine would like to have me believe that honey doesn’t help with allergies, and coconut oil has no health benefits, my personal experience tells me the exact opposite. Not verified by WebMd, but by actual day to day living.
In closing, there are far more FB pages with way more dangerous bs. Conservative political hate groups, supporters of terrorists. Racial, Religious, Tribal, and Nationalistic groups, and stick in the butt moral finger pointers….

I think I’m in love with you Dawn. It takes guts to post something like this because you just know that you are essentially ringing a dinner bell for all the Trolls to answer. Since Rob42 has pretty much laid waste to the flying monkey brigade, and thank you so much for that Yeoman service there Rob42, let’s drill down a bit more.

I do not know why some here have utterly lost their scam/BS detectors, but let me help you out. When a person has a “buy my crap” button prominently displayed on their Facebook page that BS detector should be at least in the yellow if not deep in the red section of the meter. The good doctor is shilling a product, he has skin in the game people. Onward and downward to GMO.

If you really have a problem with GMO food you are going to have to totally abandon your present life style and take up the hunter-gather life style. This may be a problem for most as the opportunities to go truly paleo are not what they used to be. Everything you eat is GMO, everything. It’s called agriculture and we as a species have been doing it for about seven thousand years. We have altered the DNA of every food crop out there by via selective breeding. GMO is just a faster way to do this.

I’m not going to bother with the debate of how Monsanto might be evil in doing this, just the type of evil Monsanto may or may not be up to. It makes no sense for Monsanto to poison its customers, dead people don’t buy stuff. Monsanto wants return customers. It’s also really bad form for the government to allow its citizen to be picked off by the score so a multinational can profit off the carnage. It is thus in the interest of both Monsanto and the government to ensure that GMO foods are pure and safe. Labeling? Please, honest labeling would have every food item you purchase labeled as Genetically Modified because, to repeat, everything on your table is Genetically Modified whether it comes from Big Ag or from the Mom and Pop Organic Farm. To eat, or more likely starve, naturally you would have to pick up your trusty spear or bow and arrow and start hunting game. How you explain this to the ranger when the game is out of season is beyond me.

Shifting gears, it is interesting how some here run past “go”, fail to collect their two hundred dollars, and settle into some nice, toxic Ad Homenim attacks with a side order of misogyny. Why is the default either “paid shill” or just straight out calumny? There is so much butt hurt here and so little time to respond to it. Dawn has done her work and laid out here case and it is a good one, a prima facie case as I would have it. There is a claim, links to support the claims, and two examples of what the general flavor of the sites are via the comments. I have a working idea what these sites are like. She did her work, she had to wade through the sites, it’s not her fault that people there are banging on about chem trails, fluoride, and other tin-foil-hat type subjects. These sites have Admins and if those comments did not reflect the tenor of the discussion on the board or violated the rules of engagement, those comments would not be there for her to find. It sucks when your favorite site gets slammed for a post that has over one thousand likes, but you got to live with that cone of shame.

If there is anything in these “alternates” it will be found, isolated, distilled, and yes patented so Big Pharma can make tons of money. But to make those mountains of money Big Pharma has to jump through numerous hoops of fire, a whole regime of testing, to make sure that their product is both safe and effective. Meanwhile, Dr. Natural is under no such limitations, he does not even have to sell you what he claims to be offering. Your Tea Tree Oil could just be reclaimed and filtered McDonald’s deep fryer oil for all you know and have the extra added “benefit” of heavy metals to boot. No, seriously, herbs shipped in from China have been tested for and found to have lead and other injurious heavy metals in them. But hey, heavy metals are natural , so it’s all good I guess; why not buy something that is not what is says it is, and get the added boost of a persistent toxin?

Every site mentioned has some form of the “Big Lie” they take a grain of truth or conjecture and then coat it with fear, loathing, irrationality and bunkum. There are issues with our food supply that do need to be dealt with. There are also issues with our drug delivery system that need to be address. Big Pharma does have its issues and embarrassments. However that is no reason to trail off into conspiracy theories and unproven treatments. Look at the theme here people, each one of these sites is offering medical advice that is a toxic brew of quackery, fear mongering and snake oil salesmanship. Your “alternative” is to wrap yourself in tin foil and to literally buy into suspect “cures” and “treatments” that violate the first rule of medicine “Do no harm.”

The exception is the one New Age spiritual site. But even there it is only a hop, skip and a short jump back into the woo-woo. Sooner or later there will be an article on how you must buy these small rocks that will be your BFF and realign you Karmic Chakras because some nice Guru being chauffeured around in a Bentley mumbled some words over them. Expanding consciousness , having Spirit Angle guides, and reading Auras sounds mostly harmless but it lacks the rigor of any serious philosophy or faith.

Dawn has provided a service here, she has gone neck deep in to the woo-woo, on deep Safari, and brought back a report on the natives. Now any time I see these sites being used to buttress an argument I know two things: one the argument is hopelessly specious, and two I am not dealing with a person who resides in the fact based community.

You forgot to add this to your bio:
“… And, in addition to my ‘extensive knowledge of science from university and personal studies’ I know more than anyone else on the Internet about what’s best for your health, trust me! Oh, and my sponsors asked me to add this to my post: ‘Today’s blog post brought to you with warm greetings by Eli Lilly, Monsanto, Coca Cola, and Friends. Have a toxic day!”

Few things I’d like to say, and a couple points that need clarified:
1) You stated: “Genetically Modified Organisms are safe to eat. They go through extensive trials to prove that before they end up on our plates”. Please define “exensive trials.” Last time I checked, it was 90 days. And done by THE VERY COMPANY that wants to sell us the product. Please forgive me for not being reassured.
2) “Basically, if you are a well-known scientist, you are a shill.” In some cases, yes. In the example you provided of Niel DeGrasse Tyson speaking out FOR genetically modified foods, Definitely!! Mr. Tyson is an Astrophysicist speaking OUTSIDE of his area of expertise! He is lending his credibility and fame to a subject he IS NOT an expert in. He is a shill. If I feel a pain in my chest, I’m not going to go see an Electrical Engineer; I’ll talk to someone who has made a study of medicine. Similarly, when I need advice about the safety of GMO’s, I’d rather listen to a biologist than someone who has studied where baby stars come from.
3) “Really? Citation needed.” Ditto back to you. In Spades!

Please note, I am not actually here to defend most of the opinions you are detracting. I AM HERE TO GLEEFULLY POINT OUT YOU ARE JUST AS BAD AS THEY!

Astonishing how an article like this can bring out the supporters of pseudoscientific woo from the woodwork. I clapped aloud to read your list of charlatans and hucksters. I have nothing against natural remedies… as long as they work and have some double-blind, placebo-based, randomized trials behind them. Or *any* sort of scientific verification.

James, may I offer a quick education about the difference between “selective breeding” and “genetically modified?”
Selective breeding: I take 2 cows that have desirable traits and breed them together.
Genetically modified: I introduce a spider into the above so they can have a merry little threesome.
Please note: the first example uses genes the cows already have, I’m just picking the ones I want. The second adds entirely new genes into the mix. Genes that are not cow, and have never been cow.
The difference is rather similar to, “I need a short person to crawl under this house and do some plumbing. I’ll hire Spud Web” (selection); vs. “I need a short person yada. I’ll cut Shaq’s legs off” (modification).

Do you realize your bashing methods of healing people that has existed way longer than moderne medicine? On top of that we are only getting sicker and sicker yet you don’t think drinking coke, poor food quality and diet should be changed which is what many of these things are encouraging? The use of oils and foods to heal people sounds a lot better if possible than drugs made in a lab!!!!

Whoa. Dawn. You are grossly misinformed, and spreading poison. Your extensive knowledge seems extremely limited…perhaps to fine art? Your links…hmmmm…work on those. Some of them even contradict your related rant! It is perfectly fine and acceptable to have your own opinion, but you should keep in mind that there is always two sides to each story. If you elect to live spoon fed by our governments propoganda media to distract from the real world looks like, and raise your children that way, that is something you will live with. There is a great big world out there, you should learn more about it. We (those raised in the mainstream) are groomed for obedience starting at a very young age in this society.

Btw…do some actual (this might take some work outside of googling and clicking on the first link) research on flouride, it was originally used as chemical warfare to reduce prosioners resistance/mental capacity in POW camps.

Also…If GMOs were safe, other countries wouldn’t bother to pass laws identifying them, and stating that these are dangerous. Research outside of the company /government standing to benefit.

This was just sad. Better luck next time hun. I just seriously can’t believe you wrote this…and actually believe this. 🙁

A very good list with excellent reasons why they should be ignored unless one is trolling for laughs or researching psychopathology. It is a shame that some people are so lacking in knowledge of logical reasoning and the methods of science that they can not distinguish between reliable material and bovine excrement.

Big Pharma can’t patent and profit off off nature, that is why they don’t like the fact that people are using natural remedies. It cuts into their profits!!!! And is safer with less side effects, have you ever read some of the inserts for medications concocted by Big Pharma??? The side effects of some of the drugs amazes me! I think who the hell would take this shit???

One look at the woman from Eat Clean , Train Mean , Live Green tells me her lifestyle choices aren’t hurting her , and likely not anyone else. She looks incredibly healthy , and does her research before posting . If someone comes along and posts something that contradicts what she’s read , she researches some more and admits if she didn’t have all the facts . Her page probably helps a hell of a lot more people than this page could .You took ridiculous comments from random trolls to try to discredit these people. Not all of them deserve to be on this list , but this post sure earned a spot.

Most of the above is just opinions. People just have to figure out for themselves what is right for them. Just because you (any of you) are firmly convinced of something, does not mean it is actually right. Science itself changes its mind from time to time about things that scientists previously thought were settled. So. Nobody is in a position really to feel smugly superior to those who disagree with them.

Whilst I agree with you on (insert sites I don’t like) I think you must be totally wrong about (sites I like)!
Just for good measure I shall cast aspersions on your journalism and scepticism and imply that you are an industry/ government shill!
😉

Wow just wow, what a completely ignorant article, eat all the GMO’s you’d like Dawn shove them all in your face!!!! Who the hell are you to be writing about whether these peoples opinions are right or wrong??? I didn’t know that a “web designer, educator, artist, mommy” was also a dietician, doctor or health professional or at least someone who has a vast knowledge on these topics, enough so to warrant an article like this???!!! Shame on you!!

I would like to add “dawnsbrain” as a site that we should share from because by the looks of it this site is supported by pro-GMO companies. How does this sound?
Dodgy as gell, this site is. Please, Dawn tell us how much is your boss paying you to write this bullshit? I do not support the conspiracy theorist freaks but the arguments that you have on offer here are inexistent and you just behave like an internet bully. Ffs monsantos last resort, to hire some wack ass scum to warn people not to share info (however daft that info might be) from sites that go against monsantos (or any monsanto for the matter) business plan. Just let us be, we can stay healthy without your enlightening instructions, thanks.

Good for you, if you don’t beleive in nature, in love, in energies, in health, and sharing a better world.
Good for you if you are happy, with that killing medecines, with that closed mind and heart of yours, with living in that matrix and beleiving whatever the governement and the medias is telling you…..

But please, fucking please, keep it to yourself,right now you just posted a big fat shame on you. Proving that, you need to put people down to feel more important, bashing on others because people don’t agree with you.
You think you will getting something positive being that negative?!?!
You need to change your way of seing life my dear.
It would be good for you, your heart, your life and all the people that are actually beleive you.

Well that was far too much of my time wasted. Do you even know what you’re talking about AT ALL??? Alex Jones has been known to over dramatise the information he shares, granted but if you care to actually look into these things yourself instead of just assuming he’s talking crap because you assume he is, you may just surprise yourself. As for Dr Mercola….. well, if you think that telling people to stay away from fluoride, GMO’s and the other stuff you mentioned is dangerous then you really need to have a word with yourself. Also, i shall ask you this…. why do you think they have a dedicated court in the US specifically for the purpose of dealing with cases due to vaccination damages?? And why do you think they pay out 10’s of MILLLIONS in compensation that is kept extremely hush hush?? because they’re completely safe, right?? Don’t make me laugh.

Personally, i think you’re doing this for a reason and that reason is to try and turn people away from sources of truth. You are a narrow minded, ill-informed and judgemental individual that needs to step away from the internet before you get severely burnt. Stop spreading opinion and start citing fact if you plan on continuing with a life in the world of blogs. Spreading disinformation is far, far worse than anything you’re accusing these pages of. I’ve not heard of all of them but it seems that the ones you’ve accused of being most dangerous are the ones that are known to be bang on the money with exposing the harmful side of life and those that are forcing us all into it. You don’t have to be a conspiracy nut to know that their is a whole lot of corruption going on and at YOUR expense. If you want to do their work for them and send people the wrong way entirely, you go right ahead but once you look into these things yourself instead of quoting some other chumps blog or even worse, getting your “facts” from Snopes.com, you’ll quickly realise that you’ve been played for a mug just like the rest of the anti-conspiracy battalion.

You’re either extremely misinformed or in complete denial…. What are your qualifications for debunking natural remedies or declaring vaccines to be safe? You are part of a huge problem that people with minds of their own would like to address….

Just out of curiosity, how is this post any different than large-scale bullying? You are taking thoughts and ideas that you do not agree with or understand, as well as the people who believe them, and you are publicly ridiculing them. Isn’t this what we should be standing up against? Not that someone has a Facebook page that they enjoy – which has nothing to do with you. Let people believe what they want to. Let them read the articles they want to. Let them “Like” and “Share” whatever the hell they want to. It’s not hurting anyone. But this, this post is hateful, negative, and targeting *other humans beings* and it is hurtful. It’s hurtful to be mocked and ridiculed, and even more so in a public forum. Maybe you should spend more time thinking about positive ways to influence people and less time using your webpage to promote bullying.

“The most certain way to develop this ability to discern truth from baloney is education. In particular, an education in science will help protect you from the charlatans and cranks of the world.”

Couldn’t have hit the nail on the head any harder… too bad you’ve never done your research. Hateful ,ignorant and arrogant people like you are the problem in this world. My word for people like you is “religitarded”… normally I use this for the sheer brilliance of those religious nut jobs… but if you’re really going to critique websites of people you might want to actually do real research (like interviewing the people involved before ASSUMING you are the most perfect blogger/ nutjob). People like you make me sick.

You lost me very early in the piece there. You talk more tripe than some of those do. Please give us credit for working out what is sensible and what isn’t. And also 99.9% of it is entirely safe to try so why not? Whereas a lot of pharmaceutical things are not unless taken far more carefully. I’m far more suspicious of those than your ways. I really don’t know who you think you are to be telling this to US. You’ve got no credible back up whatsoever so it’s just your opinion. Well they do say laughter is the best medicine and you have given me a good laugh, and laughing at the amount of comments who put you where you should be. Back in your box. This is unreal! lol

I was kind of eager to see bullshit revealed as I started reading but came away rather disappointed. There are two kinds of extremes when talking about lifestyles. You give examples of one rather poorly and demonstrate the other very well. You’re article is as slanted as you claim the pages you discuss to be. Reason is best presented with facts not opinion.

Great article. Profit motive aside, a lot of these sites remind me of a post WWII KGB ????????????? campaign. You know, the typical “Your American government and it’s capitalism is trying to kill you”. Most people are unaware that the first book blaming the CIA and the Fed for JFK’s death was written and published by Soviet intelligence agents. At a time when Russian nuclear armed Bear bombers are constantly being intercepted off the coast of CA and WA, why should we be surprised that they are trying to incite communist revolution in America? The players have changed, but the game remains the same.

Wow. Your article has really gotten people worked up! Amazing that the mere suggestion that we evaluate claims based on scientific support is so threatening to people that they respond so emotionally: when information conflicts with one’s beliefs, discredit the source! (“you’re a paid shill, you’re ignorant, you’re close-minded”). I appreciate your post Dawn, thank you.

Just wanna say while yes not everything posted is probably true there are a lot of great articles on all of those websites that are true and backed by many different legitimate sources. Just because how they view the world isnt how you view it isnt wrong. There are a lot of articles while not proven to be true are also not proven to be false and its up to the reader to do the research and figure out what they believe is true. Health myths and fads have been coming and going many years before the internet and many of which are just now having studies done only to find that these things are in fact useful and good for the body. While some of the writers on there dont actually site sources and such many do. And as a people we should learn to find the truth in everything regardless. To simply say that theyre not correct based on your view of the world is more close minded and idiotic then then the sites your bashing on. Also just because a scientist says it true doesnt make it so. Theyre proving and disproving things all the time. Many of scientist get payed and can influence their research and findings either neglecting certain information or whatever else it may be but also siting peoples comments means nothing about the site itself. People say some things that they dont even believe themselves on the internet. Ever heard of trolls? Theyre everywhere and you shouldnt let that reflect how you feel about a site. Bring the facts about the sites with true actual information to debunk what it is you think these sights are falsely spewing. You added no actual information and that makes you just as bad as the sites you listed. If you want them to do something then you should hold yourself to that standard otherwise you are just propagating the same biased information. IF you arent willing to change how you do things then you cant expect others to. Also If people read one thing on a website and go all out on it then its their fault. I would personally find many different sources on this massive ever changing www we have right here at our disposal. It only take 5-20 minutes to find out whether or not what the information theyre bringing to the table is true or not. And If I cant find any other information regarding the subject I usually just let it pass on by. But I think the overall effect of these websites are rather positive. Unlike your post.

You want to talk about people and organisations spreading biased misinformation that is dangerous? How about starting with Fox News and the rest of the right wing biased mainstream media, they reach far more people and have far worse negative impacts than putting an onion in your sock.

You are the the problem that you are trying to bastardize. You sound like a kid who thinks they know the world. Please stop with the misinformation and at least back your joust&perry’s with peer reviewed study’s. Although, many have recently been found to be forged, 43 major ones I believe. Says CNN. But at least start there.
p.s. You suck.

No, you are the one that is uninformed and probably in the pocket of corporations and government entities that have their own agenda. For 50 years I have studied nutrition and alternate therapies, and I can vouch for them, as they have kept and healed me from many diseases over the years. Before you spout off regarding things you either do not understand, or choose not to admit, I suggest you open up your mind. I don’t agree with, or have not studied, #1 or #2 of your list, but the rest all have valid points, and I thank God for the good mental, emotional, and physical health they have provided me since I began living by them.

The fact is the internet is not a medium where anything said can be believed at first glance. There are and will always be those that fuel their own agenda and views, irregardless of the facts,truth or viability of honesty. Believe what you want, just be prepared to get berated if what you believe turns out to be absolute horse manure.

The irony of many of the readers’ comments make me laugh…to paraphrase, “I love your article and agree with most of what you say. But if only you knew that honey is the all-cure elixir you poor soul, and you cannot just dump my little delusion in with all the others. I’m selective when it comes to bullshit”.

I love that so many people have seen through your lack of knowledge and research. Your clearly one of these very well programmed trolls, who believe’s everything there told by authority without question or free thinking. You have cited absolutely no pier reveiwed works, or any other kind of documented works to back up your claims of rubbishing these website’s while these website’s have gone to great lenght to be informative and cite much research from respected members of the science community (something you clearly are not).

It leaves me wondering just who are you really – you seem to be the one with the agenda here – you want to rubbish good information and rot people’s opinions with your unfounded, dis-information. All in all I draw the conclusion that you are in one way or another a Monsanto employee or something of that ilk.

Next time your going to make such a toxic post, you should do your research, perhaps then you will realise just how wrong you are BEFORE making a fool of yourself.

Wow the conspiracy theorist really came full force today defending their magic powders and even going so far as to calling you nuts and being a paid shill. Seems from the reaction of these people here, maybe that 10 list that they so cling to is something that should be listed.

Nah I say let them share that stuff and I will know which people on my list I need to never take serious about anything they say ever again. That spirit science crap was getting on my wall a bit too much(though about as harmless as that “share this if you love jesus and ignore if you worship satan and kill puppies” ) as of lately.

I already do that with overly conservative people on my list who believe that obama is making an army of atheist socialist LGBT backed by communist Isis and taking away Christian peoples guns to arm the LGBT group to take over the united states, which will then be split between the LGBT, russia, and islams. This will form the trinity and become a part of the new world order and all white christians will be enslaved.

Did I just use a bunch of buzzwords that do not make sense put together? yes. Is that what they really believe?Some. Is it more believable than the shit that comes out these new age hippies attacking you are defending? By a long shot.

I SUPPOSE YOU WANT TO ALSO HIDE THE DANGERS OF DIHYGROGEN MONOXIDE TOO?

Should you be concerned and why?

Yes, you should be concerned about DHMO! Although the U.S. Government and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) do not classify Dihydrogen Monoxide as a toxic or carcinogenic substance (as it does with better known chemicals such as hydrochloric acid and benzene), DHMO is a constituent of many known toxic substances, diseases and disease-causing agents, environmental hazards and can even be lethal to humans in quantities as small as a thimbleful.

The internet: Where every idiot with free time and poor critical thinking skills can have a voice.

The other side of this huge information problem is that the people who DO have a reasonable amount of skepticism and an understanding of just how much bullshit is out there DON’T have a voice. They frequently arrive at the conclusion “I don’t know, I don’t have enough good information.” Unfortunately that makes for pretty boring blogging and neither satisfies nor cultivates the idiots’ fear of the unknown.

So remember this, next time you’re “researching” chemtrails or whatever the hell fearful, panic inducing headline, ask yourself “Are there ads on this site? Is this a social media site? Is the author trying to sell me something? Is the headline ” If any of those cases are true, give them a negative marks for reliability for each thing that’s true. . NO AUTHOR HAS A VESTED INTEREST IN YOUR WELL BEING. 0. none nada, fuckall. However, they DO have a vested interest in your clicks. More clicks = more sweet sweet google ad words money. Higher traffic = higher rates for paid advertisement. People will lie to strangers for money. I assumed this was obvious.

GMO’s ‘might’ be safe to eat, but they are slowly destroying the worlds unmodified reserves through cross pollination. Eventually there will be no seed but those that can only be purchased from the few companies selling them. They have to be bought each and every year and they have little to no competition.

I take exception to some of these on the list. I suspect this list was put together by organisations whose profits are suffering badly now that people are finding out certain things. McDonalds, for example have seen profits drop consistently for the last few years because of people like The Food Babe, and Mercola, exposing some of the questionable ingredients. The Food Babe has been successful in actually getting many of these ingredients removed from some fast food companies, some of these ingredients are banned in Europe but not in the US because the US government agencies are too corrupt to do anything for public benefit if it affects corporate profits. Mercola is a very good site too, very well researched, and he has interviews with some of the leading scientists in various fields. No doubt a few errors slip in, but as an example, for many years he has been exposing the corruption in the food agencies that have been lying about cholesterol and saturated fat to benefit the processed food industry and the pharma industry (statin drugs for lowering cholesterol are worth £3 billion per year), but it is now starting to be accepted that natural cholesterol and fat are beneficial for health, and it is in fact sugar and processed oils and grains that have caused the problems we see in rising heart disease, diabetes and cancer. Instead of ridiculing these people, we should be praising them. Regarding the other sites on the list, there are a couple of ridiculous ones on this list that are most likely there to help discredit the rest by association. It’s a common trick.

Dawn Pedersen, you’re a super smart web designer! Not usually 2 adjectives that can be in the same sentence. Love how you took controversial content and keywords, embedded carefully selected links and and have provided information to people that will both love and hate your article. You must be pleased with the good and bad feedback you’re generating. I applaud your “invisible” self promotion. One of the best I’ve come across. Bravo! If you ever need an associate for a project, please look me up. https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcierozalsky

Please note her ‘about’ blurb: “My name is Dawn Pedersen. I have been designing for Web and print since 2000, and I’ve been teaching college design courses since 2004. I have provided design services to clients across the globe. I have a BA in fine art and an MA in education. I also have an extensive knowledge of science from university and personal studies.”

There is tendency for web-designers to feel all-around smart because the nature of their job which is pretty much intellectual, problem-solving and hard-working. But instead of your misinformed, bs-filled rant, you should have informed yourself right before making allegations of charlatanism behind those actually wonderful sites you posted.

Remember just a few things, and this is the crash course to humanity, where we currently are:

We live in media-induced, corporate-controlled financial, energy and maybe even spiritual matrix. Many have fallen, but many are waking up too. I consider myself waken up.

There are even very nice tools for spiritual wakeups, do your surf and find out, you should get better after just one seance.

Test question for you today is wheter you believe 9/11 was false flag operation? If not, I regard you as my enemy.

I see many of you are discrediting Alex Joines the first among them all. I wanna give my opinion that he is maybe most constructive and eye-opening among them all. I know many of you don’t like his style, but you should consider the anger and rage he feels deep inside. He is definitely not a paid shill, and maybe not all the theories are true, but how does show the core of the world problem in most practical way, among all of these sites… Also his balls are biggest because he does actually showing us our enemies. Why don’t they kill him? Because they will confirm many of his rants are true.

Get out of Matrix, right now. We’re living in bullshit world in every aspect. Please sheeple, realise that for once.

Thank you. Firstly – Nutrition and health advice is an unregulated industry that is overrun by marketers who have no need or wish to be informed about science or scientific method They talk about good and bad bacteria, genomes, immune system etc etc and yet if you asked them to e.g. state the chemical formula for glucose, explain the difference between aerobic and anaerobic fermentation, give three examples of prokaryotes, explain what is the difference between a virus and a bacterium, explain the roles and origins of types of immunoglobulin – they couldn’t do it. So, Pseudoscience is created by marketers and propagated by those who are ‘innocent’ of understanding and the skills of scientific evaluation. Secondly – scientific method doesn’t count as a scientific fact any rumour, myth, legend and what someone wants to be the truth. It has a process of PEER review and evaluation. Particular attention is paid to whether the experiment (which is conducted under controlled conditions) and the results can be recreated by other appropriately qualified scientists. Science is not for evaluation and acceptance or not by popular vote or ‘social proof’. So next time anyone who is incensed by this article needs an operation or treatment for a life threatening disease, will they visit a specialist practitioner who is insured, regulated and has spent 6+ years training how to diagnose and treat the condition or will they consult a soothsayer?

Fact: Fluoride has been banned in many European countries as it has been linked to thyroid disease and endocrine disorders. I lived in a city in NZ that has the highest rates of fluoride in the water of any city here. I, and many of my neighbours, not just in one street, but in the restaurants next door to me and in front of my flat, all had thyroid disease at the same time. An epidemic of it, in a few hundred square yards. The endocrinology department at the local hospital was overrun with cases. This is no coincidence

Tell you what, you go on ahead and eat up all that GE food. I prefer mine free of any pesticides, herbicides, and GMOs. I don’t necessarily always agree with everything I read 100%, and I think a modicum of common sense is necessary when taking in some of the information provided. Some of the pages you’ve bashed put out some very useful and credible information when it comes to nutrition. Quite truthfully, a good majority of Western medicine practitioners know very little about nutrition, and are very reluctant to employ non-conventional practices of medicine that have been tried and true before we became a nation obsessed with treatments that come out of pill bottles – treatments which very often merely mask the symptoms of a condition rather than treat the root cause. Bottom line……….good nutrition and healthy life style goes a long way in preventing many conditions that plague our society, and much of the information contained in some of these pages, employed with common sense can be very helpful to that end. Please don’t tell me that pesticides, herbicides, and GMOs are safe – I’m not buying it for one second.

Worst article ever. You are an uneducated moron and i hope you wrote this simply to stir people up, rather than because you believe what you’ve written! Keep eating your GMOs and drinking tap water, and don’t dare complain when your body and mind falls apart in later life.

Just wanted to say well done. Its surprising in the comments how many people read crap and believe it so when you point out its crap they assume you are wrong – shows a basic flaw in human psychology perhaps. I think the loonball Alex should have been at No 1 personally but I understand listing a set of complete bullshit into which is most annoying is a personal preference so I respect your choices.

After reading your comments further perhaps you should include the comment section as a honorary number 11 on your list 🙂 …you know, just to respect the moronic stupidity of a lot of bullshit believers. Keep up the good work Dawn, if you have pissed this many fools off then you are doing the right thing.

I have been following some of these websites for quite a while and I could not disagree with your article more! I am a well educated person who works in the science field and I have worked in some of the finest Universities in America and some of the scientific articles from mind unleashed and collective evolution are well written and scientifically accurate. Also, next time you get a yeast infection try the honey and tell me It doesn’t work!

My crap detector just went off. Open mind means you are able to understand all possibilities, it doesn’t mean you believe it; inherently and through own experience you know how to pick sense from the nonsense.

Not because it was in any way ‘factual’, but because it basically listed all the places where open-minded, creative intellectuals hang out. The mark of a fool is to read something and believe it is true… that’s why the information is presented that flies in the face of conventional “wisdom” in order to give the reader the power of choice to make their own judgments and decisions based on a range of alternative information.

Your ignorance of GMOs and the defects they cause, the vast number of neurological and physiological maladies caused by vaccines (more than 200 of which have been documented by the WHO) and various other ideas you have ignorantly poked ‘fun’ at, simply because you think you know better, and so it’s easier to go along with the pack than to actually do any real research or experimentation yourself. That’s sad. But again, the majority.

Basically, I think your article is the best on the internet simply because you have done exactly the opposite of what you intended by writing it. You have given all of these sites GREAT publicity. Free advertising. A whole new crowd of people who are willing to listen to alternative ideas and make their own decisions. Hell, maybe even experiment with some of them in order to gain a personal perspective, instead of just going with the crowd. In all of history… it is those men and women who DID go against the popular notions and ideas of their day, that became revolutionaries and legends.

Do yourself and the readers you are misguiding a huge favor. Experiment with these ideas yourself before you make any further judgments out of pure ignorance.

I noticed you site webmd.com. As a medical person, I know that site has some not so great information. My patients have said that they found certain things on there and then called to make sure it was true. Thank goodness they did call first, what they were going to give their baby could have cause a lot of harm to the baby. There is false info on that site too.

What utter rubbish! Why do you scientists think you’re so bloody superior? How do you think the world ever managed without you? I suppose next time you’ll be telling us that microwaves are safe. You have a duty of care to put sound info out there not just slate someone and retort with “yeah right” or an argument equally as thin. As humans we use about 5-10% of our psychic abilities but just because psychic and spiritual stuff it isn’t rooted In “Science” doesn’t make it wrong. Science has been wrong before, government cover ups do exist and things can be healed naturally so do everyone a favour and wind your bloody poorly informed neck in!

According to her own “About the Author” blurb….. She isn’t a scientist. She is a web designer and an instructor of web design classes with a degree in fine arts. She says she has studied science extensively, but does not list an actual accreditation for science, or science related fields.

I have no bias regarding homeopathy, holistic medicine, or traditional Western medicine one way or another. Rather, I use a mixture of the three methods THAT BEST WORKS FOR ME INDIVIDUALLY.

Considering the fact that the author, by her own admission, is not qualified to make the pronouncements, or, more accurately, denouncements, that she has, I think this article is crap. That alone is enough for my “Crap Detector” readings to soar off the charts, but in addition, she fails to cite most of her “facts” while hypocritically demanding citations from others. Also, I found her criticism of the cartoon to be asinine and childish, as her response was, in essence, “So it’s bad to have culture?” Hmmmm…… Critical thinking skills? Basic reading comprehension? Not in evidence here. Let’s also not forget that it is clear that she made no more than a cursory attempt at research before posting this.

If she had stated that this was an opinion piece, I wouldn’t have said a word. Instead, she chooses to tout her opinions as fact, and with a condescending and arrogant tone to boot. It would seem that she assumes that most people believe what they are told automatically, but to me, it appears that she herself operates that way.

She doesn’t counsel her readers to research and decide for themselves, she basically says “You’re wrong and stupid because you don’t believe what I believe” over and over. This article isn’t sceptical. It is hypocritical, judgmental, and poorly articulated at that.

One day people will realize all of these “nut jobs” were right. When do we get to say, told you so? When you are dying of cancer? BTW you don’t sound as intelligent as you might think. Go back to your artwork, Dawn, since it’s all you know.

Your example is totally baseless and a disingenuous appraisal of the authors critique.

This article published in a VERY obscure journal with a VERY low impact factors merely says is that the chemical properties in turmeric “show promise” in the treatment of Alzheimers. There is NO mention of the word “cure” relative to the ingestion of tumeric.

If there is please cite that one.

You should really maintain a practice of responsible posting if you are going to champion science and use examples that actually reinforce what you claim.

Friends, have you heard the word of SCIENCE? Take SCIENCE into your heart today. You may think SCIENCE has succeeded in banishing the evils of God and ghosts and hoodoo-voodoo. But despite the might power and absolute truth of SCIENCE, there are still wicked, irrational, kooky, dangerous beliefs out there. For SCIENCE to triumph over the wicked, these must be stopped! People who think they are something more than a meat machine are a threat to a SCIENCE-based society; they may randomly burst forth with assertions of a corrosive, radical subjectivity, even demanding “rights” that challenge THE GREATER GOOD (as interpreted by a rigorous peer-review process). Release these dark, superstitious impulses! You’re not an expert! Lean not upon your own understanding but bow down before those who are QUALIFIED to use their critical intelligence. Accept SCIENCE into your heart and be SAVED from superstition!!!

Some of the sites I share lots from. One person’s liberated information is another person’s propaganda. Its the age where our personal beliefs will very quickly create our external reality and we can get the feedback as to what is truly bullshit.

Don’t let anyone else tell you what is or isn’t. Everyone is just trying to sell you theirs.

To read this properly we need to have a picture of the author and their leanings/beliefs. It is obvious they are very pro establishment and this is clouding their judgement on many issues. Supposedly this list of ‘crackpots’ are making claims outside of the established beliefs, well with the right knowledge we can easily prove them to be true! So with that in mind the list ends up eating itself.

Just because it isn’t general practise in hospitals or hasn’t been published in the single particular medical journal you ‘might’ read (I doubt very much) doesn’t mean it won’t be true.

Wow, as a person who grew up with herbal remedies, in a family where most live into their nineties, all I can say is you can keep those synthetic drugs that are not natural and I’ll keep the natural ones. In the end, it’s all about the money to these drug companies, who charge outrageous prices to give you a synthetic version of what nature provides for free. But if science creates it in a lab, and it costs a small fortune, it must be better for you right? And we all should trust the fda right? If they actually cure your health issues, they aren’t going to make any more money off of you. As for the spiritual websites, that’s a matter of choice and belief, like any other religion, so live and let live. People have been beating that dead horse for thousands of years. Science and nature both have their places in this world. We need both, but above all else, we need to practice a little common sense. Stop being sheep , start asking questions, then you can decide for yourself. This is the dumbest article I’ve read in a long time.

This is a very poorly written article. You are not qualified to judge the quality of information that these sites present. You’re very close-minded and quite ignorant about the healing power of spices. You come across as a paid shill for big Ag, particularly Monsanto. They are one of the most despicable companies in the world. They are not to be trusted. Do you not know that most of Europe has banned or required labeling for GMOs? Unfortunately, our government agencies who are supposed to be protecting us have been bought and paid for by the big players in the food and drug industry. And, to answer some other small-minded commenters, the only reason that big pharma does not make drugs based on foods is because they can’t patent them and make a billion dollars. So they go crying to the FDA to try to get food-based and other supplements much more difficult to produce and buy. You’re crazy if you think you have any clue of what you’re talking about regarding this article. SMH.

To both sides of the argument: “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” Aristotle
To Dawnsbrain’s and like-minded unfortunates: Dawn’s supposed degree is in what again? Not science or any field of medicine, you say? I rest my case.

You are an educated idiot who shouldn’t be allowed to post anything any where. Your useless waste of hypocritical bullshit should have you looked upon as close minded, disrespectable, and arrogant. You claim all these pages are not worth my time yet none of them have to downgrade another to get recognition. You are disgusting.

True scepticism is the commitment to distinguish between knowledge and belief. Perhaps you think of yourself as a sceptic Dawn, but you’re not. Dis-belief is merely the belief that something is not so. You merely pit your adopted dis/beliefs and opinions against those of others, but you do it as if your’s were The Truth. By doing this, you identify yourself as a fundamentalist. You are another fundamentalist pseudo-sceptic performing another disservice to the those gullible members of the public you claim to be protecting. Perhaps they deserve you. I don’t thing so.

THE worst piece of online anti-holistic propaganda I’ve ever read. Disappointing that someone took the time to compile that list – shame – you’ll never get those minutes (coz I’m sure that’s the time it took to dream all that kak up) back. Wake up Dawn and smell the ginger and honey tea…

My Crap Detector is telling me that this post was sponsored by the administrators of the “Crash Course” series (see all the recommended pages) and the unused email address that I shared to make this comment will now get promotional emails from that website.

I have healed my body from an autoimmune disease looking at these websites. Medical Doctors couldn’t help me and paid them thousands of dollars and all they gave me was drugs that did not help me but hurt me and misinformation. These sites promote the truth…what is your problem…are you being paid by Monsanto etc.. to discredit these websites? If it was not for some of these websites I would be dead! The information from these sites saved my life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Stop spreading lies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am in no way associated with any of these sites but know if that info was not there I would be 6 feet under….They saved my life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dawn what exactly in your credentials makes you qualified to say that the claims these pages make are untrue ?It seems to me this is an article written by Monsanto. I I have a bachelor’s of science in nursing and I know enough to know that although you must take everything with a grain of salt, many of the claims these fb pages make are rooted in truth. I think you should be number one on your list of pages to not repost!

It appears that the one who compiled this list is working for the Facebook police, ie., the criminal government? Hmmm. People should stop reading your senseless drivel and follow all of the pages you listed here. There is much truth in articles about the dangers of GMO’s, vaccines, etc. and it would help you and your loved ones to educate yourself on these topics. But if you prefer to remain ignorant, I wish you well.

Dawn, I hope you don’t read these stupid comments. I couldn’t get past the first one where Srishti claims that Turmeric *heals* Alzheimer’s.. Of course the article they point to makes no such claim, simply pointing out that it seems to improve cognitive function in AD patients, and “may have a role in the cure”.

I can’t bring myself to read past a quick scan of the other nonsense posted here based simply on the number of exclamation points in some of them.

“And Roundup is perfectly safe, eh? There’s a scientist at MIT who says it isn’t, but what the hell, she’s probably a quack.”

She’s a computer engineer with a specialism in AI linguistics as I recall. Everything she says about glyphosate (note, NOT Roundup, related but not the same thing) is out of her field. So far outside that her opinion is no better than Alex Jones: but more dangerous because you see “Dr” and assume they have Godlike knowledge of everything.

Her correlations are as accurate as her junk science. She’s a goddam embarrassment to us all.

I think you struck a nerve. Keep up the good work Dawn. I learned a long time ago there is no helping someone who has already bought into a conspiracy. We can only help those sitting on the fence. Ironically, seeing the disturbing zeal with which these folk defend this nonsense is probably enough on it’s own to make anyone think twice.

and where is your proof for all of these so called “points of yours? All you do is state your own OPINION, not facts now do us all a favour and get down off your high horse, open your mind and let us open minded folks enjoy these articles in peace while you go and enjoy your fake cancer medicenes and eat your artificial gmo plants and look forward to dying when your in your 60’s while people like me will live to our mid to late 80’s ^_^

It’s funny, the people who are slagging Dawn for being “no more reliable” than the nutcases she’s saying people need to stop sharing from.

Nowhere did Dawn say she endorsed anything. Nowhere did she say that she had an alternative healing technique. What she pointed out was that these 10 websites/Facebook pages (and thousands just like them), spread DANGEROUS misinformation. Telling someone to take tumeric to CURE Alzheimer’s disease? No. Telling someone NOT to go to their doctor when they are sick? No. Telling someone NOT to vaccinate their child because, you know, population control and aborted fetal tissue (where did THAT even come from!?). No. These people/sites/pages promote very, VERY dangerous “health advice”. Dawn is pointing out that their information is dangerous. Not that you should be following her advice, but that THEIR advice IS INCREDIBLY DANGEROUS.

Yes, Holistic “medicine” and Homeopathic “medicine” work more towards health improvement and illness prevention, but even the natural health doctor I saw briefly (because it was covered under my insurance, i wanted to try something different for my depression and then he moved – i didn’t follow) wouldn’t have told me to see only him for my diabetes. He would have worked IN CONJUNCTION with my medical team.

Really, the warnings for these sites/pages should be “Read at your own caution, always do your own research”

Dawn, I quite enjoyed this article, thank you. Fortunately, through judicious culling of my Facebook feeds, I was unaware of eight of these sites until I read about them.
I have absolutely no problem with holistic therapies, they have been proven time and time again to offer relief, but only on a case-by-case, evidence-based basis. And that, I feel, is the crux of the matter.

The avowed aims of most of these sites are actually quite laudable; who doesn’t want to lead a long and healthy life in a world at peace? The problem comes when a grain of truth, “natural substance X can help reduce symptoms of Y and Z and is being investigated” turns into ” X is a cure-all and panacea and the results are being suppressed by Big Pharma!!!1!”. As is so often the case, the two camps drift further and further apart, becoming more polarised, ever more defiant in their denunciation of the other, ever more sure of themselves.

The internet was supposed to bring people together (OK it was supposed to bring computers together, but work with me here!) but instead it seems to be driving them farther apart.

“We shall have World Government, whether or not we like it. The only question is whether World Government will be achieved by conquest or consent.” – International banker James Paul Warburg, whose family co-founded the Federal Reserve – while speaking before the United States Senate, February 17, 1950

“The technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities.”

Zbigniew Brzezinski (former National Security Advisor to Jimmy Carter) in his 1970 book “Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era”

i know I’m very late in reading this, but I come from a family that’s so far from based in reality and just lives to revel in every one of these sites listed here. Like, I grew up under the forced treatments of the good doctor Mercola, and just so much, SO MUCH crazy from my parents to this day. I’m like the only truely functional member of my family when it comes to science, medicine and sanity and I just fist pumped my way so hard through this article so hard I thought I might have shed a tear lol. Keep up the good work!!!! (Part 2 is also good, but this one was just SO RELATEABLE to me)

Simplistic thinking. Somd o f those “bad” sites have good info, and a few are kinda “out there”. But I sure wouldn’t take advice from dawn, cause that brain is nonfunctional. Yes, tea tree oil can be toxic to dogs, for instance. But so is chocolate, and most human s enjoy it. Not room to comment on everything, but denying all of natural medicine due to a few kooks is illogical. And whats wrong with using the best of nature AND the best of modern science?. Ill take echinacea, and antibiotics if I need them.

You hit it out of the park, spare a few inaccuracies mentioned by other posters. Of course there is some good information on some of these sites, but the majority of it caters to the scientifically illiterate masses. I for one despair when reading some of the nonsense posted on my facebook feed. Thanks for making these list, it’s much appreciated. 🙂

Dawn should be getting paid for this kind of brilliant commentary. It’s not every day that you have someone with no background in science with such strong opinions that just happen to default to trusting every special interest out there! Such a brave, pioneering critical thinker – capable of being a shill with no expertise! Glad most of the commenters see the irony. After all, Dawn has “extensive knowledge of science” from “personal studies”! She’s done her own personally-reviewed studies! LOL

Dawn, I’m afraid your brain has mislead you down a slippery path of conformity. You are the prime example of what’s wrong in the world because you have a strong inability to accept any new form of thinking. You really think chemtrails are just clouds? Try doing some ACTUAL research into barium, alluminum and geological engineering, because it’s been public knowledge for over 5 years now. You really think GMOs are safe to eat? How about looking at studies that aren’t financed by the companies selling you said GMOs. There is an important reason why they’re banned in almost every country except ours, and why Big Food corporations spend hundreds of millions lobbying why they shouldn’t have to label them. But, oh yeah, you have a blog, so now you’re a genius. I forgot.

You say that fluoride is perfectly fine to drink, yet, I’ve never gone to the dentist for a routine cleaning and they say “yeah, go ahead and swallow that after swishing.” Fun fact: Hitler used fluoride in the concentration camp water supply during his reign, but he was just trying to make sure they had white teeth while torquing them.

Spirit science is soooo awful too. Oh no, heaven forbid people actual listen to a bunch of poppycock, pseudo-science that has only been practiced here on Earth for, mmmmm thousands and thousands of years. I guess you’re a genius on that too. You’ve studied chakras, energies, frequency physics and how it applies to our physiology on an atomic scale. I’m sure you turn the other cheek to people that meditate and try and connect themselves with this planet, because well, you have a blog and are an expert in ALL the sciences.

Give me a break. You’re a joke, and so is your blog. You’re no better than a hipster that looks down their noses at everyone because they’re so much more informed than the rest of the world.

Do some credible research, use a couple of those neurons up there and then critique these people. Until you do that, please, for the sake of the people that follow YOUR bullshit, stop blogging.

Anyone who has looked at rationalwiki with a critical eye knows they have very little credibility. They have no interest in solving or getting to the bottom of something – rather, they just choose the most simple explanation that might get the masses to discount the information and write it off as settled. They can be a useful research tool, however. Just don’t expect them to ever give you the whole story beyond what they have to address in the course of attempting to get simple minds to stop questioning.

HA! All those sites except the so called “Food Babe” are great. The only site I woulnd’t share is this, your crappy site which you should call “Dumb brain” instead. You are against people who are doing something positive to change the world for good and while they are doing a great job and working for a better world (and having tons of thankful followers which you don’t have), you need to hang on their success to be at least a bit relevant. Please, fuck off, losers.

Cut through the crap. The World is a shithole and PhD’s, Scientists, Doctors, Lawyers, Attorneys. Judges, Politicians, Religious Leaders and all the other crackpots have Royally Fucked this Planet up with their Lies and Bullshit. All of these are VALID sites…what are you some mind controlled crackpot or a drone spouting bullshit and sanctimonious babble for your Masters?… God …

Yet this headline reads like a “clickbait” headline, and so immediately summons my distrust, and will cause other people to point out that this article, which criticizes specious web sites and specious headlines, begins with a specious clickbait headline itself. People love to holler: “Hypocrisy! Your argument is refuted!” Even though an accusation of “Hypocrisy!” is the redoubt of the defeated.

Maybe, for a headline, use something less dramatic but more believable, like … I don’t know … “Web sites implicated in use of specious language for marketing purposes”.

I’d like to share this article but am embarrassed by its headline, and don’t want the stress of people hollering “Hypocrisy!”

Also the tone of the article is sarcastic, which discourages me. Sarcasm is common and easy and gets tedious pretty fast.

I do believe that every web site discussed in this article is specious and spurious and designed only to make money for its underwriters. Never give your heart to someone who is trying to sell you something. Don’t give your money, either.

You’re exactly like pages you criticized. Example, in article about cola which says it is poison, you simply answer by saying no cola is not poison! Then beneath that critisize them for not mentioning any scientific source.
This is a poorly written article, for sure!

Lol I liked every one of those pages after reading this shitty so called post, who are you to tell people what to like or explore? Fuck you! haha! Those that trust big pharma companies are dumber than a random crack addict on the street!

And since when do cultures need borders to develop? So, in your perspective religion does not separate people? We don’t even have people killing each other in the name of territory and religion isn’t it??…pffffffffff don’t even get me started…(and just so you know, i don’t know 80% of the pages you are bashing here, but next time try to put a bit more “brain” into it)

Hahahahaha – poorly written, even more poorly researched and when I got to “Genetically Modified Organisms are safe to eat” I stopped reading. Yep, you’re paid by the major corporations pushing this garbage. Mental note to myself, never to click on another of your articles, as you have no idea what you’re talking about.

Hi Dawn. I’ve read some of the feedback and some of the comments are pretty damning and vitriolic…. and I’m not surprised. How do you feel about your article now??
I don’t get why you so blatantly disrespect some very helpful and informative Facebook pages. You commented on The Mind Unleashed and in your words you wrote “So cultures are bad?”
You simply don’t get that message at all Dawn. What that meme is conveying is the fact that we are all born onto a collective planet, but we’ve separated ourselves, made borders (countries) , become patriotic and selfish. The point is that we are all one, brothers and sisters regardless of cultures (which are absolutely fine by the way) but we’ve lost our way . I hope some of the comments haven’t upset you, cos you’re entitled to say what you like, and some comments are brutal, but I hope you’ve taken a step back and re-evaluated . We live and learn Dawn, all of us. It’d be interesting to know in hindsight what you now think of your list of pages to avoid.

Nut job or not, everyone has the right to their own opinion, and to share whatever they want to. Attempting to shut down, or stop sharing things with which you disagree is fascism. Thanks to this piece of crap article, I now know that I will not be sharing anything from Dawn’s Brain.

Wow! I think I blew out my thumb scrolling to the bottom of the comment section so I could add mine. Whomever put you up to this BS is full of shit. So are you. People have the right to judge for themselves. And guess what else? We have the right to post whatever the hell we want, just like you posted the above garbage. You are right in one regard, there are some things that are put together by hacks and should be totally ignored, ie your opinion. Somebody put something in that joker’s mouth……my fly is stuck.

Oh thank goodness I’m not the only one that thinks this article is garbage. I have personal experience using a lot of the things she’s trying to debunk. I love how she wants to discredit all these pages with NO links, facts, data, nothing of her own to back up her claims. Wow..
Epic fail lady…

where is any “proof” for this persons opinion?this person who wants “proof” from all of these pages ? i honestly liked this article till i saw CE on here. everything is not true from them but no one should believe 100% of the things they see online. most of the things they post they do not put as “fact” but just as food for thought… why attack a site trying to help better peoples thoughts ? which in the end is all this article should be about,helping others see some thing they didnt or couldnt see themselves .. but all i saw was “wrong this” and “crazy loonies” that , with little to no evidence of your own…. please keep it to your opinion and not as to what you think is true.

alright, thanks for the heads up that this site is written “the way you wish to”… maybe i’ll go start a blog . never made one , but this seems like a good topic , my first article will go something like “top ten sites not to believe” .

you’ve inspired me :’)
if you’re going to hate have a little more bite , a little less bark in my opinion .. thats the only real reason i’m bothering. and if you don’t get my vague comparison , have some hard links i can go waste my time with. some valid links. aswell, if it wasn’t clear i’m not going to waste my time actually slandering this site, im not out to hurt.. but the next person wont be like me.
/p.s. you missed my point slightly i feel with the last comment, most of this article is blaming those sites for not having any evidence ? (correct me if i’m wrong on that its been a long day at work in the sun) then you wrote a good portion of yours the same correct ?… you see nothing wrong with that ? <– honest questions here
/p.p.s one more thing! i feel i should mention that this and the other comment were purely for helping you take something away from them , even if you dont . that is my only intention , although its probably a weird way of doing it.

i appreciated the thoughts of helping you put into this , so i felt you'd appreciate my thoughts that i thought would help is all. no need to basically say "i write how i want" ( <–my interpretation )..

not saying you shouldn't write how you want either, just so were clear haha
have a good day 🙂

^[TLDR;] if no one shows you something you didn’t see behind your head , or tells you something you were not there to see or hear .how will you ever progress or discover certain new things ? i’m just trying to tell you my opinion of your opinion of a bunch of other opinions, to try to benefit us both. and the only reason i took the time to try is because you seemed like you were trying to help/.

I love how the blog is titled “Dawns Brain” when it is so clear she hasn’t one. Honey IS medicine and has been used as such for thousands of years. It’s ok though, making uninformed comments about things you don’t understand is par fir the course.

I came to the Comments section to critique your article, and I’m pleased to see the vast majority of commenters have already done so. So, I will just say, the only thing this article demonstrates is that you’ve swallowed the mainstream propaganda hook, line and sinker. Sadly.

Try opening your mind a little and evolve. There’s much more to the world than meets the eye.

Lots of butthurt commenters here. Differences of opinion are all well and good and people are entitled to be wrong. But there are certain errors so egregious that everything you say afterwards loses pretty all credibility with sensible people. For instance when some of the above pages talk about “chemtrails” or pimp homeopathy you’ve more or less lost me there.

alright then … count the entire tree bad from one bad apple ? just keep your hands in front of your face , that also blocks everything out as well . if you never take anyones opinion seriously but your own i doubt you’ll learn much . i am not saying believe it all , and yes some things they post seem far fetched .. but always keep an open mind , and if things go exactly as you predicted ? your just where you were before, where as if you keep most things as a “maybe” you may benefit. but like you say ,most if not all of this comment section is just opinion.

That is a lousy analogy. Each of these pages have publishers which allow miscellaneous forms of woo to pass through the filter. Its not a case of a “bad apple”. These trees themselves show signs of rot. All of them that I am familiar with are repeat offenders.

Look there are only 24 hours in a day. 8 of those I spend sleeping, 8 of those I spend working, 4 of those I spend raising my kid, 2 of those I spend doing housework and 1 I spend exercising. That leaves one little hour to gather information about the world including health and wellness..

Trust is a delicate thing and each of these pages (at least the ones I a familiar with including Infowars, Natural News, Food Babe, Mercola and Collective Evolution) have lost that trust because they have repeatedly published patently obvious pseudo scientific garbage. The fact that distrusting and thus ignoring them may cause me to miss out on some possible nugget of truth is the necessary consequence of having multiple demands for my time. I’m sure many others can relate to being unable to be THAT “open minded”.

The true nature of these sites should all be obvious to any intelligent person with a basic knowledge of science but, as the comments show, it seems that there are a lot of people totally taken in by the pseudoscience propaganda, so articles such as yours are very welcome.

It is a sad reflection on people that the main focus of the comments should be personal insult but perhaps this is just a reaction to realising how stupid they have been to be so taken in by the lies and deception?

The good thing about science is that it is true, whether you believe it or not. 🙂

Hello Dawn,
I read your article with interest, and with my critical faculties engaged. You ask us to not believe the things these sites are posting, yet provide no real evidence of your own. Seems a little hypocritical! You provide no background on yourself, or why you are qualified to make these judgements. You are entitled to your opinion, and that’s all a blog really is- don’t get carried away thinking that just because people can read your thoughts, that makes them somehow more true than all the millions of other opinions people publish on the net. You’ve asked me to be sceptical, so I am: you’re peddling as much crap as everyone else. Get it over it hon, live in the real world!

Thanks for a list of websites. It’s really nice of the people on these websites to take time out to educate people on what they’ve discovered as it gives people a chance to be able to make informed DECISIONS about their own health and lifestyle CHOICES before being duped in to taking dozens of different medications every day for the rest of their lives. Congratulations on making yourself look like an idiot.

Wow, I wonder how much this author is being paid by the organisations behind GMOs, RoundUp, Chemtrails etc.? Seriously, get your head out of your ass and do some proper research – this stuff is BAD NEWS.

We pay Dawn $1000,000.00 monthly to make these posts so you guys don’t figure out our Chem-trail Idea, it’s top secret.

These people convince themselves they are smart/informed based on videos from youtube and articles they read. in order for them to accept it’s all fake they will have to admit their mistake and look very dumb, hence why people are upset.

Good job!

P.S. I’d love stats or an article on what people do for a living who believe this crap.

That was rubbish about Dr Mercola. He is not a charlatan of any sort..he genuinely has the people’s health at heart and a lot of what he publishes is true..he doesnt just recommend his (very good quality) supplements but obviously he has to make some kind of income he gives out a lot of free info/advice..which a nutritionist would charge for. Big Pharma and Big Food obviously hate him and are lobbying the government to try shut him up because so many Americans and others worldwide are paying attention to what he is saying.

For a science advocate, Dawn is terribly un-scientific! I too love science, and rationalism! But the ‘Crap Detector’ in my brain was going right off after reading this blog! It’s obvious that Dawn’s just trying to pass off her own limited, misguided opinions and overtly biased views- as being scientifically sound. OH THE IRONY! The presumptuous nature of this blog is laughable.
I believe in rationalism, scientific enquiry and evidence based research. But ‘facts’ are sometimes changeable.. it’s all relative in the end.. the ability to discern between “truth and baloney” (as Dawn puts it), is just so subjective sometimes.. it isn’t just based on your education, it’s also instinctual. I’m more sceptical of someone who is so quick to discredit something when they are so obviously ignorant of certain facts or thruths that just happen to lie outside the realm of thier own interests. One person’s truth is anothet person’s baloney.. an education in science will only get you so far.. common sense, curiosity, and an open mind are also necessary in the scientific process, as science itself has also served to disprove many strongly held theories, or facts that were held as apparent truths. Knowledge isn’t wisdom Dawn.. you need to be more humble as you do not know everything there is to know.

You are a complete ignoramus of the highest degree!!! Obviously there’s not many brain cells working in “dawnsbrain”. I’m astonished by your complete ignorance. “Genetically Modified Organisms are safe to eat. They go through extensive trials to prove that before they end up on our plates.” Really??? I stopped reading your mainstream bullshit after that!!!!! Turn off your TV and go do some research.

dawnsbrain is another systemic zionist website aiming to discredit pages with good information, it correctly states that alex jones scares his readers in order to sell his survival kits, but thats to keep you reading in irder to defame the rest

Wow, you really seriously dropped the ball on this article in like every way possible. You just denied so many facts, failed to do sufficient research, and implied that people suggesting healthy food are claiming to be Dr’s . You obviously got your head in real deep somewhere and need a glass stomache to see where your going. Your a F*cking clown buddy. Don’t waste your time writing something so long if your going to actually purposely ignore all the facts or just lack any understanding at all of any of this. ???

The people who have been posting here in a red-faced rage probably unquestioningly also subscribed to this person:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_Gibson
Also, after reading the irrational comments, it’s easy to understand how religious cults get recruits.

This is the stupidest fucking thing ever. I know some of this stuff is pseudoscience but you haven’t tried any of it yourself to even make a valid opinion. There’s now colleges in Vermont teaching ppl about the biofield, chakras, etc. Quit causing harm to future advancements

What’s interesting is that a lot of supermarkets (I’m in the UK) are now using it in strengthening their positions /to advertise /market themselves that they no longer stock GM products. Whether it’s true or not the fact they’re saying it says something. They’re unlikely to publicly admit being against GMO’s unless there’s something wrong with them! And yes, I’d love to know what Dawn does as a day job too. I don’t believe everything I read on some these sites but I certainly think there’s a lot of useful and interesting information there. I guess she’ll suffer at the end of the day not having a healthy balance when it comes to things like medical treatment when looking at holistic Vs conventional medicine and food in general and the choices she makes. Her loss. Shaming these websites hopefully won’t do much anyway, people with half a brain know how to filter and they’re the ones that will benefit from awakening to what’s going on. I feel sorry for her!

Wow!!! This article is very cynical and sarcastic in putting down websites which are trying to make the world a better place. But its worst crime is its stupidity, and hypocrisy in doing exactly what it accuses the other websites of doing (citing opinions with no evidence to back them up). Infowars is probably the only site I’d posit as being overly paranoid, but I see nothing wrong with sites that promote questioning the system we live under and proposing positive alternatives for a better world. I’ll bet that many people’s lives have been changed for the better because of many of those sites, but I doubt anyone’s life will be changed for the better from reading this nasty little piece.

Those websites you think are trying to make the world a better place are actually just taking advantage of your ignorance and your ideology. You’re better off checking out some good websites like sciencebasedmedicine.org and learning about facts before criticizing this article.

Wow Dawn girl.
Either you really don’t get it, which is fine, because we are all trying to do our best with the level of consciousness we have.
Or, you are being paid by an organization that don’t want people to wake up, so that they can continue with their disgusting, cruel and egoistic secret agenda, which is very bad.
If you are consciously ridiculizing scientific evidence, or even consciously ridiculizing this collective awakening that humans are going through right now, well, that doesn’t say any good about you.
So I hope you are an immature soul.
You need to wake up!

Thank you, Dawn. But I have to say in all honesty, the comments are the most interesting part. It is amazing how worked up people get when you question or debunk their deeply held beliefs in pseudoscience and junk science. Scary, too, actually.

Oh, dear. Dawn, you and your pals here probably gather your facts about science from Fox News. Yes, some Internet chatter and self-promotion is garbage (like yours), but some of the sources and science you mock are proven facts/legit…but I’ll bet you have not taken the time to study and tease out fact from fiction.

I was really hoping to see websites that promoted hateful propaganda and websites that sell outright lies and post information taken out of context when it comes to the political world we live in. Instead, I see you are against healthy living. While some of the information about health cures may be a bit extreme, there is no doubt that healthy living can do a lot of good for someone with health problems, especially with self-inflicted health problems such as certain types of diabetes, heart disease, or obesity. Many health problems may indeed require medication. But remember, many medications do nothing more than mask the symptoms, not cure the disease. So if someone can reverse their health problems with healthy living, then what the heck is wrong with that? Healthy living has to be much better than popping a ton of pills for every single ailment. You example of coke not being a poison is obviously not well thought out either. I’m sure a coke once in a while is fine. But there are people who ingest it regularly. While it may not be a fast acting poison, certainly all that sugar, caffeine, and all those chemicals can’t be good for the body. It might as well be a slow acting poison.

So you just believe all the nonsense from these pseudoscience peddlers then? Why not actually look at what the science says and stop believing the nonsense? This is a good article that is trying to help stop the spread of harm from believing in things that aren’t true. If you want your echo chamber then go back to Mercola’s website and comment there about how mean skeptics and scientists are.

I was once a believer in religion, supernaturalism, energy healings,” alternative medicine,” herbal remedies, homeopathy, essential oils, Joe Mercola, his ilk and all manner of pseudoscience. I was anti-vax, anti-GMO, anti-chemicals and conspiracy-minded. I was even a Young Living rep for a bit, until the “training” tapes started getting uncomfortably preachy about Jesus and the Bible. Quitting that alone saved me hundreds of dollars a month.

In 2001 I lost my religion. While on an atheist blog I clicked a link that changed my life: scienceblogs.com. There I found Orac (Dr. David Gorski), and enlightenment. I found I was spending thousands of dollars on products and “treatments” that were unproven, unregulated and unsupported by scientific evidence. I went into it determined to argue in favor of alt-med, but the more I dug into the evidence, the less I believed – same thing that happened with religion.

I caught both my child and myself up on our vaccinations, stopped spending all that money on woo and pointed my formerly like-minded friends to evidence-based sites and those that called out quackery and pseudoscience. A great many of them have snapped out of their gullibility by learning about the scientific method and process, and doing a little more critical thinking.

All that said, I do share some of the motivational or poetic quotes and memes once in awhile, and a few pagan ones now and again – I do still like their basic philosophy, sans magical thinking – to make my Wiccan mother and pagan friends happy. 😉

Thanks for this, Dawn. Don’t let these unpaid shills for woo-slingers’ comments get to ya. Dann the torpedoes, full steam ahead!

Ok….on the alex jones note, whom ever wrote this article is clearly in support of the killer vaccines, chem trails, pollutin our water, etc smdh. Hes not a fear mongerer like ppl enjoy sayin…he just gives it straight n gets hella excited. Oh if ur gonna try n show proof of how bad a person alex is make sure the comment is accurate n accordin to issue cause 1) dont exactly know who the comment is for ie it says jordan at the top not alex jones 2) i have been listenin to alex for 5 yrs n not one time has he ever been supportive of what the elitist (freemasons, vatican, jesuits, black nobles, buildeberg, etc) r doin smh. Apparently u dont listen to him but rather listen to hype smdh

Take a natural substance to a lab. Break it down. Synthesize. Add chemicals. Get “doctors” to push it by offering incentives. Convience people it’s better for them than a natural cure by making a commercial. You’re right. We should all support big pharmaceutical companies. You know they have OUR health in mind not their wallet.

I’m all for modern medicine but don’t think for a minute the meds didn’t start out as natural remedies first.

Well done Dawn. Nobody says those websites are not well-intentioned – although their positive intentions are corrupted by the fact that they all have a commercial interest.

Neither do I agree, as one poster says, that because Mercola is full of shit, means you endorse eating Doritos, and surfing your couch. There are evidence-based health and wellness practices – unfortunately the facts are more boring than “eat this miracle food…”

So well done… I assume, Dawn, that you are a fan of my boy Goldacre (Bad Science)…

Did you seriously bash people for choosing to eat healthy and try naturalpathic medicine, all while promoting GMO’s? Eating clean, healthy and sustainable food from natural food sources are essential to promote good physical and mental health. Theres lots of scientific data that supports what I just wrote. I’m not going to send you links. How bout you use your fingers on the keyboard to expand your small mind? As long as honey has been in production it has been used as medicine. Glad I don’t subscribe to your blog.

Just wanted to let you know how stupid I think this article is. I feel bad for you and your writing/blogging career.
Next time watch what you post, it could seriously come back to bite you in the future.

This article is the largest pile of donkey dung I have ever read. If you don’t think that the crap they are putting in our food, water etc are not affecting our well being, than you have your head up your butt. Obesity in children alone (think HFCS) should be enough to open your eyes. I would regularly visit all of the pages you have listed (except one actually) before I would ever come back to this one. My oh MY you are so off base

All these pages contains good solid info that is not paid from pharmaceutical companies. You should read a book once in a while. You might learn something. I’ll rather take nutritional advice from Healty people, than from a sick medical person any day. ?

I appreciate your thoughtfulness in providing this post. There is a dirth of information on the internet, and a remarkable amount of people willing to become loud when anonymous. However, I think that Western medicine is very young, and that big Pharm and Agra do not have our best interests at heart. I think that medical studies can be misleading as well as sometimes articles led to make us believe that natural medicine is the only way. I appreciate many of the sites you attempt to debunk because they offer alternative thoughts and research. I take it with a grain of salt the way I take western medicine with a grain of salt. I think there is truth everywhere, but never the whole truth. Although I appreciate your attempt to save us from charlatans, I don’t think you’re right. And I think you’ve become what you detest. Make things a yes or no, and it’s easy to find yourself debunked too. My thoughts.

I took a quick look at your blog, you’re entitled to your opinion. It seems your opinion is to shun any type of nutrition or lifestyle beyond the typical American one. Working in medicine I implore people to exercise, eat a balanced diet, avoid fast food/processed food, salt, sugar and fat. Its easier for our society to dish out prescriptions for diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, these people end up on medicare, medicaid and then you and I pay for their life to continue. I wish there were more people who saw their health as investment.

The remainder of your blog appears to be weak rhetoric, but since you feel so moved to criticize others you should open to it as well. The article about chiropractors made me chuckle, as it did exactly what you shamed the above folk for; no resources, no research, no referrals. If you want to post your opinion, then let others do the same, don’t be jealous because they have more followers then you.

I know , you’re trying to make yourself popular, but guess what? You didn’t. For example, GMO isn’t safe to eat. We thought that it was safe. Now scientist proved that GMO can affect our DNA. Also, GMO can make our children to have a birth defect. Don’t forget that it can cause cancer and so on. GMO isn’t tested enough and there may be a lot of other dangerous consequences. So before saying do a 5 minute research on Google. :)Have a nice day, everyone 🙂

This is a great article and I really appreciate it, along with the other articles that go along with it. There is so much pseudoscience and woo spread on the internet (specifically facebook) these days that I have trouble correcting all the wrong thinking that my friends and family are spreading. We even talked about this article on my podcast thebrainstormpodcast.com . Thank you Dawnsbrain for being a voice of reason in a sea of crap.
As for the idiot crew that is trolling the article, I don’t think we’ll be convincing them any time soon but we may be able to share this article and more like it to people who are on the fence a bit and make them a bit more skeptically minded. Ignore the comments and keep on writing.

What a pleasant rational site this is. It will be bookmarked and visited frequently from now on. I can’t share on fB however because I don’t have an account. Judging from most of the comments here that situation is unlikely to change.

LMAO! You are doing the EXACT same thing you bash them for in this article. Much of the info that you are ‘discrediting’ and being false IS backed by scientific research as well and proven on a daily basis by Naturopath physicians, allergists, the FDA, Harvard research, etc. How dare you use you (incorrect) personal opinions of these items as fact. Add yourself to the list or find a new hobby. *smdh*

What She Says About Herself
– She claims that science, art and tech is a “wonderful” combination! She claimed to have a BA in Fine Arts and an MA in Education, and 30 college units in “sciences”

What She Really Does
– She is full of shit and dismiss anything that is oppose to the status quo. She belongs to a group of idiots who will obviously will not survive if she was born (and grew up) before the 20th Century or even before the hippies started rubbing themselves with the trees.

I agree with Hemmingway’s reference to having a “crap detector” and being able to separate bull sh*t from substance. This is something everyone needs to decipher their way through the glut of (mis)information found on the vast highway of the Internet.

Having said that, I noticed you have 30 units of science. A typical bachelor’s degree program of study on a semester calendar requires at least 120 credit hours to be earned by the student. Normal full-time registration is usually 15 credit hours per semester or 30 per academic year, which means you have the equivalent of a year’s worth of science study. And while I applaude your challenge to everyone to “see through” some of the wacky stuff out there, and yes, some of it is wacky, you are not grounded in some of your observations or opinions, making you similar to the individuals contributing to your list of sites to avoid.
In the end, each one of us needs to search for truth, and this should begin with a thirst for knowledge. Let’s not be the blind leading the blind, but rather be driven to know truth that sometimes hides behind a veil.

Please tell me specifically which observations and opinions are not grounded, in your opinion. But begin by stating how many college science units you’ve earned, so I can determine if you’re qualified to have one.

Yes please tell us how much you’ve been brainwashed by the system so we can determine if your qualified enough to make statements which are common sense. Dawn you will always be a moron no matter how many “college science units” you have on paper!

Nice Work Dawn,
I have an acquaintance who has started one of these blogs/websites after being diagnosed with Follicular lymphoma (FL) . She was treated using conventional science based medicine and is in remission but the treatment was pretty rough and she seems to have come out of it very angry with conventional treatment . The challenge for her now is not only what seems to be a treadmill of different Juices, Fasts, Enemas etc but trying to make some sort of living from blogging, health coaching and mediation sessions. She has a partner who earns a good living but when her main customers are friends who have similar businesses and will expect her to patronize them in return it’s not going to be easy to make much money herself. I pity her, not for her illness, but for the hard road mentally and physically she is pushing herself down.

wow, Lots of energy, which ever way it goes. I do believe in and use most of the sites you mentioned for information. I have spent most of my working life and career in the medical field as an RN. I could no longer encourage the medicine choices. It is the practice of medicine, and not all that old, actually since mid 1800’s and mostly in the western civilizations, I worked in trauma and imc. This type of nursing I could do, as it mostly consisted of immediate short term health care…the long term and medical care after that..it is what it is. and should be as free of medications and chemical treatments as possible. ..follow the money. Follow where the ideology goes. Always be curious,
always question. Find out how to get to where we are all going.
I chose for myself the more natural, age based health and well being ideas and therapies. The current medical field, is just that…medical based on medicine delivery and constant treatments of the side effects of those medicines. I urge people to read all information they believe is usable for themselves. They alone have control of their own body. Governmental control is here and heavier guidelines will make personal choices non existent like mandatory immunizations.
Be cautious. Be aware . Read other sources. Choose your own options and path. We are truly all connected in this great strange dream.

The comments on here are hilarious! Unfortunately, they also prove the point that those who subscribe to these websites which propagate some of the most reality-disconnected thinking ever produced, are in stunning abundance. It is a damning reflection of the sad state of science education in our public system and how few people have any understanding of sound scientific principles and critical thinking .
Their commentary here is another example of how entire groups of people can buy into preposterous ideas that end up causing endless damage. ISIS (among countless others) is another good example produced by the same kind of thinking.

I find it funny that if you agree with Dawn, you’re a paid shill, brainwashed to do so, but, if you don’t agree with her and follow the bs like Jordan’s vibration spirit science crap for example, you’re automatically right and not brainwashed. It’s hard for some people to grasp that the results from scientific studies do not need an open mind to accept (not believe btw) them as being the best explanation. When I see people accuse others of not having an open mind about what they’re saying, what that actually says is, “I’ll believe anything that is anti government and anti science because I’m paranoid”

Alex Jones, Natural News, Spirit science, and all the rest of the woo fame clan are harmful to society only because there are people still simple enough to believe their crap.

That’s a good article, thanks for that. I saved it to my Evernote account for future reference last year, and while removing the comment stream I noticed the huge amount of vile comments in it.
I essentially came by to give you a huge thumbs up! It appears that there’s really something that could be called an “anti science movement”. At least people are ignorant and only want to consume “information” that matches their believes. It’s an ideology really.
This is not some lame bashing of different people, but rather a critical approach, because I was reading some of these pages until recently as well. As a matter of fact, I considered myself being a “spiritual person” and shaman. Only problem is that there’s no enlightenment in Spirituality, non at all. People just reinforce their own beliefs, and even big rituals are nothing more than self betrayal.

Why am I only now finding out about this? As someone who comes from India, which unfortunately seems to the breeding ground for most of these tarded “alternative” theories, up to and including DBag Chopra, I must congratulate you on putting together this amazing list. These bullshitters needs to be exposed and discredited as the disgraceful conmen preying on the ignorance of abject idots, that they are. Keep up the good work. And ignore all the outraged dumbtards. Thanks.

Sad article – what is wrong with this person? So afraid that something not part of his mind set might be happening – has to be rubbish as far as he is concerned. Awful reflection of his state of mind and inability to be an enquiring person – can’t be a scientific person, because science is about enquiry – constant questioning. Either that, or he is paid to act as an authority on absolutely everything that allopathic medicine doesn’t use for health.

How DID we survive all those millions of years?! I mean according to Dawns Brain we survived all these MILLIONS of Years with NO MEDICINE on Planet Earth!!!! Who neeeeeds MEDICAL SCIENCE AT ALL…….WHAT EVEN IS MEDICINE!!!!!!!!!!! WHO NEEEEDS IT SHE ASKS!!! Does Dawn believe God Created Chemist Warehouse on the 2nd Day!? ! I think I am even more angry at the “science, critical thinking and scepticism” facebook link that bought me here…. HERE Dawn…….thats one more facebook page for your list!

Who do you mean by “we”? Our species—Homo sapiens—has not been around for millions of years. Our best current estimate based on the fossil record is 200,000 years. We are still evolving. With our modern medicine and technology we happily live lifespans that are extended far past that which is necessary to reproduce.

I just can’t believe that this crap is still believed after all the information that is there and can be verified and correlated….This woman MUST be paid to have such an obtuse , narrow and erroneous vision on anything that is not corporatively correct ! I feel sorry for such an ignorant and refractive person. Keep on eating GMOs and getting your flu shots, if you feel that way….Good luck with that !

This is a facebook page that we definitely need to stop sharing….stop sharing? No. This a a Facebook page that we should NEVER share. I sure know I won’t share it! BULL CRAP TO BE SURE!!!!
Who’s paying you to write this crap?